Bad Deposit
by nattysuits
Summary: A new lead takes Temperance Brennan closer to her father and Max Keenan’s dangerous past too close to his daughter.
1. The Game in the Gem

**Disclaimer: **Oh boy, if I _owned_ Bones…Lord, Booth would never wear pants _again_. Oh no, siree -- she gets this really stupid faraway look--Yes, right. No, I don't own anything. Don't sue me, it'd be pointless.

**Summary:** "That's an exquisite necklace, Dr. Brennan. Reminds me of a good friend of mine, she had a necklace just like that one. It was stolen. And from a bank no less. It made the Chicago nightline," Mrs. Roth said to Booth. "I always told my husband 'there's no safety in safe deposit boxes'." A new lead takes Temperance Brennan closer to her father and Max Keenan's dangerous past too close to her daughter.

**Author's Notes: **I want to thank atrosie for the beta, the poor thing is going to suffer me for a while.

**Feedback: **If you read this chapter and think it has absolutely no redeeming features, let me know so I can improve and do better next time. If you read it and like it (if you like anything, even if you just like _one _sentence)let me know because each word from you means the world to me.

Seriously, reviewers are the soul of this place. You guys/girls rock.

Above all, I really hope you enjoy this,

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Chapter One

_**The Game in the Gem**_

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Booth and Brennan found Mrs. Margaret Roth in the living room of her mansion, dispensing instructions to a grim-faced maid.

"Dear, we don't want to offer Sissy Taylor the opportunity to point out any imperfections again, do we?" The maid shook her head. "Last time you started off wonderfully with the swan napkins, but I noticed that towards the end they looked a tad disheveled. We can't have that again, can we?"

Booth cleared his throat as he slipped his ID from his breast pocket.

Mrs. Roth turned towards them. She was 45-ish, hairdresser-blond and Chanel-stylish, a bonafide classy socialite.

She glided over to them with a hostess-perfect smile. She glanced briefly at his badge before saying, "Agent Booth, yes. You said you wished to ask a few questions about Bryant?" She shook his hand with a firmer grip than Booth would've expected.

"Yes. This is Dr. Temperance Brennan, she's with me in the investigation."

The investigation had started, informally, three days ago, when a couple of meth-heads with a bad case of the twitches and no electric appliance to dissect decided to dig a hole in their back yard—which was Woodland Park because that's where, they explained, the 'Purple Scorpion had landed' and where they'd parked their van.

You'd never find two more enthusiastic diggers. They went at it like truffle-sniffing pooches with OCD, they were four feet down when they stumbled on—or over—Bryant George. Once a landscapist, now a heap of smelly bones.

Mrs. Roth then turned to Brennan, sculptured eyebrows frowning. "Doctor?"

"Anthropologist," Brennan replied.

Mrs. Roth scanned her face curiously. "You don't look like an anthropologist." Mrs. Roth swept her right arm, encompassing the living-room's couches. "Please, take a seat."

Booth sat on a couch that he gouged was worth more than his car. Bones sat next to him, Mrs. Roth took the opposite couch.

The entire living room looked like a walk-in auction of antique furniture at Christies. The air inside smelled of old money and women's perfume. Booth drew the line at antique—_classic_, really—cars; he didn't want to sit on a couch that had more history than the Booth family.

"You've got a beautiful garden, Mrs. Roth," Bones said, looking through one of the twin bay windows that flanked the oak fireplace.

Booth felt grateful for Bones' subtle introduction of the reason for their visit, a strange contrast to her patented, brutally practical chase-cutting technique: Your landscapist was murdered. Do you have any idea why?

"The symmetry is impressive."

Aha, Booth thought. That's why she had noticed the garden. She never just liked something, there was always a clever, scientific accountability for it.

"Yes, I owe it all to Bryant. He is a brilliant young man. I don't understand why the FBI's here," she said.

Yes. Brilliant. Right. Ideas for cosmic symmetric gardens must've poured when he was riding a cocaine wave. Bryant George could have bought himself a two-way ticket to Madagascar on Coke Miles. How Bryant had managed to hide his habit so well was a mystery.

Booth rubbed his chin and winced. "Bryant is dead, Mrs. Roth. Your garden was the last one he worked on."

Mrs. Roth hand moved from her lap to cover her mouth. "Oh, no. That is. . .how?"

"We're not sure yet," Bones said.

Booth waited for the initial shock to subside. "Did you notice anything strange when he worked for you? Did he look stressed? Under pressure?"

Booth thought Bryant had been offed by a dealer with little patience for green-fingered bohemians. However, why would any dealer waste time getting 10 cubic-feet of dirt over a drug kill?

Mrs. Roth glanced up at the frescoed ceiling as if the past were showing there, like a Sunday matinee. "I don't know . . ."

Bones leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees. "Shoddy people coming to visit him?"

Mrs. Roth looked at her. "I'm sorry, I—" Mrs. Roth's eyes flickered down.

Booth followed Mrs. Roth's gaze to the centerpiece of one of the gazillion necklaces Bones seemed to own: a green circular-shaped stone that now glowed as it caught the edge of a morning light-rectangle stretching from the bay window.

Mrs. Roth's mouth parted, her eyes fixed on the gem. "That's an exquisite necklace, Dr. Brennan."

Bones gave Booth a sidelong glance before turning to Mrs. Roth. "Thank you."

"I'm sorry. It reminded me of a good friend of mine—she passed away. She had a necklace with a gem just like that one. An emerald." She smiled, reminiscing, never taking her eyes off the stone.

"Oh."

Like the old poker player he was, Booth spotted the telltales on Bones' face: mouth slightly parted but no words coming out because she didn't know what—if—she should say anything. That stood for _Confused Bones_.

She didn't understand how another human being could veer off topic and into the past, especially when the topic related to a pile of remains and _especially_ for something as unrelated and inconsequential to the present as a gemstone.

"This isn't a real emerald," Bones finally explained, running her thumb over the gem.

Mrs. Roth nodded, lost in thought for a millisecond.

"Adry adored emeralds, _especially_ if they were hers," she added with a delicate chuckle. "Unfortunately," she continued, "it was stolen ten or fifteen years ago. And from a bank no less. It made the Chicago nightline," Mrs. Roth said to Booth. "I always told my husband 'there's no safety in safe deposit boxes'."

A smile of agreement was all Booth could do while he thought about Max and Ruth breaking into a safe deposit box where 'I Love Emeralds' Adry's necklace was and how—by some twisted path—the same necklace had ended up around Bones' neck. But Bones said it was a fake. He glanced at her, she was sickly pale and staring at Mrs. Roth.

Not good. Not good. Something was very wrong.

Booth ended the interview a few minutes later.

-------

Margaret Roth's manicured nail, painted a soft pink, pressed "#1" on the study's telephone-slash-fax machine and waited for the exclusive direct line to her brother's office.

He picked up with a 'Maggie' because only Margaret knew that number.

"I just saw Adrienne's emerald necklace. Yes, _that _necklace. I _know_ jewelry, Martin. Diamonds were missing but it was the same necklace. On the neck of an anthropologist." Margaret straightened the edges of the phone while her brother talked.

"It had a bent rose petal next to the emerald, I saw it when they left. I'm _positive_." She made sure all the edges—the phone, the writing pad, the pencil holder—were aligned. "Doctor Brennan. Came by asking about Bryant, the landscapist. No. No."

She ran her finger over the edge of the desk, checking for the slightest particles of dust. "She _stared_ at me, Marty. As if she knew something. What are you going to do?"

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"Bones, Bones—wait up!" Booth trotted to catch up with Bones, who was making a beeline for their SUV. "What—?" She yanked open the door, slipped inside and slammed it close. "Ok. We'll talk _inside_ the car."

Booth climbed in and Bones said, "I believe there is a fairly strong possibility this necklace is the same one Mrs. Roth was talking about."

Her back was straight, her eyes staring ahead and hands flat on her thighs.

Booth pulled out of the mansion's driveway, hand clutching the steering wheel. He fidgeted in his seat; it took a lot of evidence to get Bones to speak with that amount of conviction. "You said it wasn't real."

She shook her head, lips pressed together in disappointment. "I assumed it wasn't because of the card. 'Happy 16th Anniversary. One day I'll get you a real one. Love, Matthew.' I found it after they left, hidden in a double trapdoor in our shed."

She reached for the nape of her neck, felt for the clasp and slid off the necklace. She studied the green gem and the metalwork. "I shouldn't assume anything anymore."

"Well said, Bones. Let's put that into practice right now and let's not _assume_ that's stolen. Hmmkay?"

She didn't look at him; instead, she reached for her jacket's pocket. Out of the corner of his eye, Booth caught the glint of the silvery dolphin.

"Bones." He looked at her.

He hadn't seen her like that since she held her mom's dolphin belt buckle in her hand. It amazed Booth just how easily the confused and vulnerable 15-year-old Tempe emerged from the assertive, independent Bones. Even if she knew now why her parents had left, that same information had reopened the wound. They hadn't disappeared. They _left_.

She held the dolphin in one hand, the necklace in the other; she studied both, glancing from one to the other as if she were making a comparison. And maybe she was. Good man. Bad man.

There was a sniffle, a deep breath and then her voice. On the edge of cracking. "I saw the. . ." She ran her thumb over the dolphin, face half-turned towards him. "I can't understand how. . ."

Her gaze flickered around. Searching, Booth thought, not for the right words that expressed her feelings, but for _any_ word. A crease of frustration appeared between her eyebrows. She couldn't say what she thought so she shook her head, denying both the inner turmoil and the need to get it out of her chest.

"It's ok, Bones. Just—it'll be ok."

"No. Don't say that."

She took a deep breath and then exhaled the air and with it, all trace of the emotional intensity she'd displayed before.

"I'm tired of hearing it." She popped open the glove compartment and stuffed the necklace inside like a pair of slimy rubber gloves.

She pocketed the dolphin like loose change.

-------

"There _is_ a fifth dimension," Jack Hodgins said, pointing his chop sticks at Angela, a dangling noodle caught between them. "David Lang is my proof." He tipped his head back and lowered the noodle into his mouth.

Angela frowned. "Who?"

Without removing his eyes from his plate of fried rice and spring rolls, Zack explained in a monotone: "David Lang was a farmer who disappeared in a corn field in 1880, according to his wife. It's a proven hoax. And it's based on a short story by the science fiction writer Ambrose Bierce. _The Difficulty of Crossing a Field._ I read it when I was six-years-old."

He looked up at Angela then. "He did not," he said, with the kind of jaded patience of a person who knows facts, knows science and _knows_ Hodgins, "fall into the fifth dimension."

Hodgins scoffed. "You're regurgitating a spoon-fed truth, m'boy. Status-quo vomit, that's what it is."

"Great—and that's the end of _my_ lunch," Angela said, pushing her half-eaten pork to the center of the table. She took a swing from her water bottle. "Bierce. Didn't he disappear too? Went off to Mexico to make buddy-buddy with Pancho Villa?"

Hodgins nodded readily as he chewed. "Bet his bones are somewhere in the Sonora desert."

Zack finished his fifth spring roll and dabbed the corner of his mouth with one of the strewn napkins on the table. "All those stories about"—he made inverted commas at both sides of his face—"mysterious disappearances are explainable. Just like Doctor Brennan's parents. No fifth dimension involved there either."

That's when the same Doctor Brennan entered the lab, striding purposely towards them, Booth lagging behind her. He was talking on his cell phone, one hand on his hip, and looking pretty frustrated.

"_Beck-_man. I want to talk to Beckman. Tall guy, blue eyes. Snorts when he laughs, loves to tell fart jokes. _That_ Beckman."

Brennan stopped in front of Angela. "Ange, did you input the data on the skull to determine a possible murder weapon?"

"No, I was—" she pointed at her unfinished lunch.

Brennan glanced at the table, noticing the food for the first time. "Let me know when you can show them to me on the Angelator."

She turned around and headed to her office, leaving Angela, Jack and Zack trying to figure out to where the wind was blowing: Booth-Brennan Bickering or Cam-Brennan cat-fight.

Hodgins gave the matter little thought. "Brennan looked different. . ."

Booth's voice rose. "First day on the job, lots of extensions. I know, Judy—Lucy. _Lucy_. Just patch me through to Beckman. I know you can do it, I'm rootin' for ya. Just press the right button." He winced, pressing an imaginary button in front of his face.

"She wasn't wearing the necklace she left with," Zack said. The comment said more about Zack than about Brennan's terseness.

Angela stood up and joined Booth, heading for Brennan's office.

Zack and Hodgins sat in silence for a moment, hearing Angela, Booth and Brennan's voices in a succession of quick-fire questions-answers.

"What if we could examine Ambrose Bierce's bones." His eyes grew wider. "What if the Mexican Government sent them here. What if they're in Limbo?"

For once, Jack Hodgins agreed. He stopped chewing, blue eyes as wide as Zack's. "Dude, that'd be awesome."

-------

"Bren, what is going on? Where's the necklace you had on this morning? Did you get mugged?" Angela seemed to understand it all at once. She gasped and looked at Brennan, who was perusing her email inbox with unusual interest. "Oh my God, honey, you didn't beat up the mugger, did you?"

"Booth has it, Ange." She opened up an email and started tapping at the keyboard.

Angela glanced at Booth. He was loosening his tie and the first button of his pink shirt.

"Beckman? Finally. This new girl you got there in reception—" He made a circle in the air with his hand, a Hold-on-a-Sec gesture. "Who are you?" His knees buckled, one arm shot up to skywards in a mock religious plea for help. "Leonard Cobbs . .. the _janitor_." He scratched the back of his head as if he were trying to start a fire with friction. "Nonono, don't reroute me to reception. Not Lucy again, Leonard. Please, have mercy."

Angela shook her head, eyes closed like a pretty Asian robot with an information overload. "Booth, could you _please_ tell me what is going on?"

"Give me one second." Booth pressed his phone between his cheek and his shoulder. "Bones," he said, pointing with his raised eyebrows at a puzzled Angela. Booth's attention returned to phone. "Leonard, Lenny, _tell me_ you know Albert Beckman."

Brennan sighed and understood. _You explain it to Angela before she freaks, I'm busy right now_. "I believe my father stole that necklace approximately fifteen years ago. I wore stolen jewelry during my first conference at the Jeffersonian."

Booth's back straightened, he recoiled his neck in surprise. "He's with you? Right now? Smoking, right. Hiding from his wife the FBI Agent. Right."

He turned to Angela and Brennan, grinning.

"Al? Listen, I need some kind of jewelry expert." Booth took out the necklace from his jacket's pocket.

Angela stared at him, then at Brennan who was now with her hands poised on the keyboard, eyes fixed on the screen but not typing.

Angela's shoulders slumped. "Bren, sweetie. Are you sure?"

Brennan's gaze fell from the screen.

"Well, Al, if the guy's in Antwerp squinting at diamonds then he's not of much use to me here in Washington, is he?"

Angela skirted around Brennan's desk and leaned on the edge, placing her hand over Brennan's wrist. "Talk to me, sweetie. Don't keep it all in, ok?" Brennan nodded but kept quiet and didn't look at Angela. "Maybe you're wrong. You could be wrong, right?"

They both looked up at the sound of Booth's cellphone snapping shut.

"There. Done. Tomorrow we're gonna take this," he dangled the necklace from his index finger, "to one Ulysses Fisk so he can put this matter to rest. We're not going to worry about anything yet, are we, Bones?"

Angela and Booth waited a response from Brennan. She in turn looked around her office, her hand still on the keyboard.

"I have work to do."

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Three feet from her doorway, Temperance plopped her briefcase on the floor with a huff. She'd been fishing around for her keys all the way from her car. She hadn't found them yet, even thought she'd grazed their steely edge twice, because her mind was engaged in two tasks.

First one, anticipating the enjoyment of a hot tub sprinkled with Seabreeze bath salts, a cold beer, music and George's case file (which she had surreptitiously stashed in her briefcase while Angela made her a herbal tea). Getting rid of the tightness in her chest, the stiff neck and the seeds of a headache nestled behind her eyes, that was her prime objective.

Second one, the determined—partly conscious, partly subconscious—deflection of thoughts related to the necklace she had always believed to be a hidden wedding anniversary present and to the autopsy photographs of McVicar.

The crude job the weapon had done to the flesh and what it all said about her father, the man she had once thought she knew: slicing and piercing a man's neck with a sharpened toothbrush so her daughter could find him was ok.

She pulled out the keys and glared at them. When she got to her door, she saw that it was ajar, feeble moonlight filtering from her window.

She froze and listened for a burglar still inside. There was only silence, a distant car horn, a dog barking. She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The blow came from her right, from a man hidden behind her door. Her keys flew from her hand. She stumbled back, hand instinctively reaching for that spot on her temple that felt like it had been cracked open. All her training—the jabs, kicks, the deflecting combinations she'd learned—gobbled up by searing pain and dizziness.

Reality fragmented, as if she were on a train coming in and out of intermittent dark tunnels.

A tug forward, from the lapels of her coat, then a shove backwards, into the wall besides her doorway.

The train burst out of the tunnel. She mustered up all her strength and channeled it to her right knee.

"Almost unconscious and still feisty," the man said. His hand clasping her knee, grip as hard as a vice. He had caught it just before it crashed into his crotch.

Another tug forward and another backward—stronger this time. The back of her head smashed against the wall. She could picture the crack widening, fissure lines snaking all the way over and down her skull to her neck.

Then it stopped. She coughed. He leaned into her.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Doctor Brennan," he said, his mouth grazed her left ear. Temperance felt his warm breath at the same time she felt the cold edge of a knife on her throat. "Don't do anything stupid."

_**To Be Continued . . .** _


	2. The Scold in the Machine

**Disclaimer: **I'm the owner of Fisk and a cat named "Tempe". The rest I don't own.

**Summary (UPDATED):** "You kind of abused friendship there, Bones, bossing her around all night."/

Fisk turned to the necklace, a thought forming. "I think I've seen this necklace before."/

"I had to leave Parker with Tessa." Temperance frowned. "I thought you two had—" "It's—it's complicated, Bones," he said impatiently. "And Rebecca—". "_Complicated_."

**Author's Notes: **Last chapter was scarce on Booth-Bones interaction mainly because my plot demanded it. Now my plot demands nothing BUT Booth –Bones interaction and this chapter is all about that. Whoopee!

Don't be frightened, Tessa is in the story but not for the reasons you think.

This chapter has not been beta-ed so all mistakes are mine. I'm so lucky I could squeal squeals .

A thousand thanks to all the people who reviewed last chapter, I hope I don't disappoint you with this one : )

To the people who read but didn't review, glad to have you onboard.

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_Chapter Two_

_**The Scold in the Machine**_

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"Oh, shit. Bones."

Booth found her sitting down on her kitchen, with one hand hooked over the edge of her sink. It looked like she'd tried to haul herself up but had lost strength. She had her forehead pressed against a cupboard, like a rock climber taking an awkward nap halfway up a mountain.

He put his hand over hers and lowered it to her lap. Gently, he turned her around to face him.

He knelt beside her, leaving his hands on her shoulders, steadying her. Bones' eyes were closed. In a moment of irrational panic, Booth believed she had died somewhere after he'd got her call and the moment he arrived at her apartment.

He gave her a gentle slap. "Bones. Peepers open. Bones. Come on now," he said. "Don't be lazy."

She groaned and pushed away his hand, which was tapping her cheek insistently. She opened her eyes. Sort of.

"A squinting squint. So glad to see that," he said with a grin. "What happened?"

"I called you," Bones said, raising her right hand to his face to show him her cell phone—she knocked him in the head with it instead.

He took the phone from her. He repeated the question, slower this time. "What. Happened?"

She looked at her door. "A man hit me in the head and said I was playing a dangerous game." She stared at him for a moment, then said, "I called you."

"That you did. And I'm here so let's get you up, OK?" He put the phone on the floor and tapped his shoulders with his hands. "C'mere." Bones wrapped her arms around him, clasping her hands behind his neck. "Hold on tight, Bones."

"Giddy up," he said with a grunt as he helped Brennan to her feet. He felt the tip of her nose and her cheek against his neck.

"Waky-waky, Bones," he said when her head lolled on his shoulder and her body went limp. He tightened the grip on her waist. "Wake _up_, Temperance," Booth said, raising his voice in _up_. With a start, Bones' arms curled around him again.

"You're wet," she said in a drowsy mumble, frowning away from the damp collar of his shirt.

"I was in the shower. You're lucky I'm not wearing just a towel."

He'd been in the shower when she called. He wasn't wearing socks at the moment, an incoherent Bones over the phone didn't leave time for socks.

They hobbled over to her couch, their feet crunching on broken CD cases.

"No, no, no, Bones. Don't try to pick them up now," Booth said.

Booth eased her down on her couch. Bones looked around her living room, shocked.

"My _Anatomy of a Balinese Dig site_," she said, pointing at a book lying on the floor, spine up and a couple of pages half torn. "That son of a—my Monk's CD!"

Shock turned into outrage. She struggled to get up.

"Bones, sit _down_." Booth dialed 911. He slid her coffee table closer to the couch and sat on it, boxing Bones in with his legs. "Yes, I need an ambulance. Head wound. Yes."

Bones wasn't deterred by physical containment. She spotted something on the floor under the coffee table and leaned on his right leg to reach it, placing her hand on his thigh—_high_ on his thigh—for balance.

OH-KAY, Booth thought.

"Oh she's conscious alright—" he replied to the 911 operator. "Bones, Bones get up," he said, grabbing her arm before she toppled over.

He felt all her stomach muscles harden as she stretched herself to reach the object. Bones was in excellent shape.

"Coherent?"

Booth watched as she came up with a picture frame in one hand. It was a sepia snapshot of Angela and herself, both gazing at something the photographer hadn't included in the picture. She put the frame on her lap, tugged at the cuff of her jacket and started to clean the surface of the cracked glass with the extra fabric.

"Yeah, I guess she's acting…coherent—Bones?"

When something was difficult for her to express, it seemed, to Booth, that Bones would exteriorize the feeling indirectly, through a sort of symptom. Like last Christmas. Being under siege by Christmas talk, twinkling lights and gifts had taken an emotional toll she struggled to face alone. The inner battle had emerged, _in words_, as an anthropological outburst against gifts and Christmas in general.

But Booth was _sure_ Bones had been a Christmas nut before her parents disappearance.

"I don't know what he meant," she said, never looking up at him. "But he didn't need to destroy my apartment to say it."

The symptom now was anger and a display of materialism Booth had never seen or thought her capable of. The fact that a man had bashed her head and threatened her didn't register—or if it did, she didn't show it.

A drop of blood fell on the picture, making a soft plop. Bones made another circle before she realized it had fallen, spreading the blood over her face and Angela's.

"God." Booth placed his fingers under her chin and lifted it up carefully. The blood came from a cut on her neck; a glistening one-inch slash of red on her snowy skin.

Bones looked at the strewn books.

"Bones." It took her an extra second to look at him. "It's just stuff," he said when he saw the anger burning inside the blue of her beautiful, clear irises.

"It's not right," she said, clasping the sides of the picture frame in her hands. The word was 'right' but the body language—the dejected slump of her shoulders—said she meant to say 'fair'

_It's not fair. _

-------

"Listen, Bones, I really don't think you should come with me to see this Fisk guy," Booth said. "You need to rest. The Doctor said that."

"We had this discussion in my apartment, Booth. We had the _same_ discussion _again_ in the Hospital in _while_ I was getting my CAT scan. And I think a decision was made," she said, sweeping her arms to show the interior of the SUV, now en route to the Jewelry Shop and _not_ her place. "Let us not be redundant _again_."

Temperance gazed out the window thus ending the discussion. "So you think that man was a crazy fan?"

"He knew your name, he made no sense. Crazy fits. Maybe we'll get an ID off the prints the police lifted."

"The prints are mine, he wore leather gloves." It seemed pointless to follow procedure.

Booth sighed, as if preparing himself for something.

Bones looked at him. "What?"

"You know, Bones," he started.

Sure enough, the man had something to say.

"I know you like things tidy but Angela looked dead on her feet. She was trying to help but I don't think _your_ kind of help was the one she had in mind. You kind of abused friendship there, Bones, bossing her around all night."

He was talking about last night. When he left, Angela stayed with her, evaluating her every move and prompting her to speak at regular intervals because she couldn't fall asleep for at least six more hours. Temperance had welcomed this, it gave her a chance put everything back where it belonged.

But Angela refused to let her bustle around and Temperance argued that mental or complete physical inactivity _would_ make her fall asleep. So Angela became her hands, putting every book back in place in the same alphabetical and thematic order as it'd been before, getting all her jewelry off the floor and bed and rescuing Jasper from behind her bedside table.

He had a chipped ear she hadn't been able to locate yet.

"I did not boss her around, Booth," she said, crossing her arms over her navy blue jacket.

Temperance didn't wish to discuss why she had felt the overriding need to discover exactly what that bastard had broken without a reason—just because he _could_.

Two opposing chisels had sculpted Temperance into the successful anthropologist she was today: misogynist professors she had faced head-on (out-smarting the sneers of their faces like a good 20-year-old embodiment of the Anthropology section in the library of Congress) and the exhilarating desire of being Somebody again. This last one manifested itself, sometimes, as prima-donna-ism. _She _had made herself important, she _deserved_ to reap her rewards.

Top of her class. Top dog. Top brains that finally made a difference.

Thousands of you and only one of _me_.

The flip side of this earned self-assuredness—that came from a girl who had gone through high school as someone else's little sister and then as 'that weird foster kid'—was a latent insecurity that became active when the order she had worked hard to establish was tampered with.

Breaking her CDs, her books, ransacking her home and tossing everything around like it was trash felt to Temperance like a violent regression to a moment in time when the exact thing had happened. When her life had been reduced to the contents of a garbage bag. And she didn't want to think about that so she changed the subject.

"Who called you last night?"

Booth had stepped away into her kitchen while two uniformed officers asked her questions she didn't care to reply and the paramedics fussed over her. Then he had excused himself, said it was an emergency and left Angela 'in charge. You hear that Bones?'.

Booth gripped the steering wheel tighter, pressed his back against the seat as if he wanted to push it back by sheer brute force. He was uncomfortable.

"I had to leave Parker with Tessa."

Temperance frowned. "I thought you two had—"

"It's—it's complicated, Bones," he said impatiently.

"And Rebecca—"

"_Complicated_," he repeated with a tone he used whenever he was tense and spoke about her social skills, usually when it had been her questionable skills which had uncovered a particular truth in the most efficient and time-effective way but that _he_ considered tactless.

Temperance did not like the tone.

He frowned at something in the rearview mirror and took a sudden left turn that made the tires screech. His dark eyes flickered from the street in front of him to the mirror.

"This is not the way to—"

Another peek at the mirror and he relaxed. "Chill, Rainman, we'll buy your underwear."

"I don't know what that means," she said. She turned on her seat to face him. "I—Booth, I can't understand you when you talk like that."

"I know. Just like _I_ can't understand a word that comes out of your mouth when you speak Squinty," he said. His eyes were fixed on the rear bumper of the car ahead of them.

There was peculiar silence then, where Temperance tried to pretend Booth hadn't just snapped at her and where Booth seemed to be sifting through ways of ending the silence and starting another conversation on the right foot.

"Kids, Bones, they sniff inexperience so they snatch the opportunity. I did it, you sure as _hell_ must've done it. Tessa was Opportunity. Parker seized it. You know Latin. _Carpe diem_."

Temperance had no idea what he was talking about but she did sense his quantum leap in topic.

"Opportunity?"

"Of tricking, puppy-dog-eyeing, pouting his way into 2 a.m. TV rights with ice-cream and an unsupervised bottle of chocolate syrup _which_"—he lifted a finger, hand still clutching the wheel—"by the way, didn't stay in his system long. 'Cos he threw it up an hour later."

"Tessa's an adult, Booth. Shouldn't she be able to resist puppy-dog eyes if you made her aware of Parker's intentions?"

He snorted and shook his head and Temperance knew her suggestion had no validity in The Real World where Booth said he lived and she didn't. Snort + shake of the head You don't know anything, Bones. She might not have socials skills but she could decode basic Booth-isms.

And _that_ was an accomplishment for anybody.

"You think you weren't like that? It's hard to say _No_ to you sometimes, Bones. I'd imagine that at five your, your"—he waved a hand, dismissing his search for an apt term—"your Cuteness IQ was at its peak. All cute with big blue eyes and big words," he said as he pinched an invisible rosy cheek, as if a 5-year-old Temperance were sitting between them, working her toddler-charm on him at that very moment.

"I did have a vast multi-syllabic vocabulary at five," she agreed.

"Of course you did," Booth said. "Probably syllogism-ed your way into whatever you wanted."

Temperance smiled. Whatever gloom had descended on Booth had lifted. She felt better.

Then, because her brain had always been able to follow, construct and detect patterns, she realized Booth had omitted information.

"So, it was _Tessa _who called."

Booth parked the SUV and said, "Here we are." And got off.

It was his evasion of a simple truth, which Temperance knew Booth was completely entitled to conceal, that made her feel as if she'd just swallowed an anxiety-pill.

-------

Fisk's Antique Jewelry Shop looked like a jewelry-obsessed hermit's cave where Fisk had squirreled away a lifetime worth of antique-dealing. The clutter could be explained by a sudden, magical widening of it's neighboring buildings which had accordion-ed the shop to half its width and shoved all pieces of furniture to the center of the tooth-paste tube shop, leaving a narrow strip of floor to walk on.

It was on the worn marble floor that Booth and Bones stood, trying to spy a gemologist.

"Oh Dear Lord in Heaven! Temperance Brennan in my Shop! Oh my God, wait till—Oh My—In _my_ shop!"

Booth glanced at Bones, he tilted himself from the waist up and spoke close to her ear, "Do you _see_ anybody?"

"Here, here!" A hand waved behind a worktop. A wayward solitary limb, seemingly unattached to a body.

Booth strained his eyes to see more of the man but failed.

"Ulysses Fisk?" Booth took out his ID, flashed it in the direction the hand had popped up. "Agent Booth, with the FBI. Al Beckman said you could help us?"

Bones leaned over his shoulder. "Where is he?"

And it was only when Ulysses Fisk finished what he was doing and _moved_, that Booth distinguished the outline of a human body from all the clutter.

To Booth Fisk resembled a human-sized chameleon: big bulgy eyes (that flickered all over them, kind of unnerving), wide mouth, extraordinarily long arms with large hands and clothes that matched the background.

"Seeley Booth? The one you dedicated your second book to?" he asked Bones.

Booth sputtered a cough. _Thank you, lizard man. _Booth sneaked a sidelong glance at Bones.

She squared her shoulders, stuffed her hands in her jacket's pocket and re-distributed her weight, all in one fluid motion. "Where did you learn that?"

Fisk retracted his hand, realizing the faux pas. "We fans have our sources. Oh my God, what happened to your head?"

"A skull fell on top of her," Booth said. Fisk looked aghast and fascinated.

Like the doggedly curious person she was, Bones asked, "What sources? Where?"

He could tell she was embarrassed to have the secret she had been so determined to keep from him out like that, so suddenly and unexpectedly.

Booth rolled his eyes. "I knew already, Bones. No harm done."

She turned to him. He didn't give her time to say anything. He took out the necklace from his pocket and dangled from his index finger in front of Fisk.

"Is it yours?" he asked Bones.

She looked at Fisk, "No, it never was," she replied. She turned to Booth. "How long have you known?"

"Listen, Mr. Fisk," said Booth, ignoring Bones, "all we need to know is if it's a fake or not." He handed the cargo.

Booth wasn't sure if he wanted the necklace to be fake or not. If it was, then Bones could get on with her life. If it wasn't, then it meant Bones had been using the clue she'd been looking for to find her father.

This dark coincidence reminded him of another, pointed out by Zack: Bones and her mother's remains had arrived at the Jeffersonian at the same time. Could it be the same thing happened again, with the necklace? There, in front of her but not there at all.

"Come, come," he said fanning air into his face and leading the way to the deeper recesses of his cave-shop.

Fisk scooted out a chair that was in front of his computer (the title of Bones' first book _Bred in the Bone_ tumbled around the screen). He offered the chair to Bones, she declined.

"This _might _take a while, unless you want to leave the necklace with me and come by—"

Booth didn't like that idea.

"No, we'll stay. Bones," he said, making a circle with his index finger, pointing at the seat at the end of the invisible circumference.

Bones rolled her eyes. A soon as she sat down she asked, "Who told you? David?"

God, Booth thought, like Bones with a bone.

"I found out. Period. I'm honored, if you care to know."

Since a chair hadn't been offered, Booth leaned on a book case that faced the worktop. The worktop itself was surprisingly modern, like a runaway part of the Jeffersonian lab, so at odds with the XVIII century air of the rest of the shop.

"Could you autograph my book after I finish with this?" Fisk placed the necklace under what _looked_ like a microscope but one never knew.

"Yes. After."

She stared at him, trying understand how he'd become privy to a secret she had so actively kept from him. Booth was surprised by the frost covering her eyes.

Two small weights descended on his shoulder. He recoiled his neck—thus looking away from Bones—to see a white kitten, front paws on his shoulder, back paws on the top shelve of the bookcase.

"Hey there little fella." The kitten meowed.

Fisk looked up from the microscope. "Oh, Tempe. She's a daredevil. Has your eyes." He returned to the microscope fairly quickly, he looked like he'd found something.

"You put my name on a cat?" Bones said, incredulous.

Tempe's whiskers tickled Booth's cheek as she sniffed her approval of him with her tiny, pink nose. Booth reached up to pet the little furball then stopped.

"She doesn't scratch or anything, does she?"

Booth knew that if Tempe was anything like Temperance, the two-pound kitten would snap him in half like a stick before she allowed him to scratch her behind the ears.

This time Fisk didn't even look up from the scope. He was moving the necklace around, to see each part of it in detail.

"No, no. She's a doll."

Booth couldn't contain an ironic snort. _A doll. _He scooped up the kitten, feeling the dainty ribcage under her silky, warm fur. Booth cradled her against his chest. Tempe sniffed his tie suspiciously and then took a paw-swipe at it, establishing dominance in case the tie was alive.

Booth smiled. "Oh, I can see a resemblance."

Booth looked into Tempe's feline eyes, exactly same shade of blue of Bones'. He used the back of his two fingers to pet Tempe on the head. She started to purr like a miniature Ford Mustang '76 engine.

Tempe's eyes closed.

Booth's mind wondered four years back, when he was telling more lies than truths and Rebecca was happy about that pink baby boy they had chosen to name Parker and didn't know the only thing that kept the gnawing anxiety from devouring him was the sight of poker table, blackjack, roulette.

He knew why the memory was resurfacing from the bottom of his mind, where all the murky pieces of his past had settled—rusting, releasing toxins. Ghostly shipwrecks condemned to stay in the dark, keeping the surface as clean as possible. These wrecks of his life only rose when the surface called them, like warning buoys.

He tried to figure out why he hadn't told Bones who had really called. And he also attempted to construct a reasonable explanation as to why a one-night-thing with Cam had turned into five one-night-things that _would_, if left to Camille and himself, become six.

"You're going to get hairs on your suit," she said.

Booth glanced up without moving his head, which meant he had to lift up his eyebrows to get a view of Bones.

She was staring at him.

He stopped petting the cat because before him was the old Bones, the one that seemed to retreat from him emotionally—as a _person—_at the same time she made him feel she was getting pretty close intellectually, analyzing him like a skull.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Tempe meowed and lifted up her tiny head, pressing it insistently against his idle fingers.

"It's a natural emerald. Not created. This is a _beauty_, almost no inclusions," Fisk said.

Bones averted her eyes from him, kept them on the floor for a second then looked up at Fisk and asked, "Inclusions?"

Fisk slid on his swivel chair to another machine and placed the necklace there.

"Inclusions are foreign bodies trapped inside a gemstone. A gas bubble, liquid or something solid, cracks, growth lines. The less inclusions a gem has, the more valuable the price per carat becomes. If the color is rich, of course. This one is." He turned on the machine, it whirred, a flash of light came from it's base. "Hmm, 1.581. I believe this emerald came from Colombia. Yes, definitely Colombia."

"Right, so, say I wanted to buy it. How much would it cost me?"

"Hard to say exactly, 20 thousand maybe"—Booth whistled, Tempe's eyes opened, alert—"The man who cut this emerald is a genius. Too bad I can't admire the rest of his work."

Bones stood up. "What do you mean?"

"Several gemstones have been removed. Quite expertly, yes, but a trained eye can tell there was something there once. Diamonds probably." Fisk turned to the necklace, a thought forming. "I think I've seen this necklace before."

Bones and Booth exchanged a glance and asked at the same time, "Where?"

He pursed his thin, wide lips. "I'm not certain but I can find out for you. May I take a picture of it? To study it more closely?"

Booth nodded and while Fisk unrolled a piece of blue velvet from a drawer and placed the necklace there. As he powered up his digital camera he said, "When you need to have it cleaned, call me. It'll be on the house." He smiled at Bones.

"Cleaned?" she said.

"It's got some kind of residue on it," Fisk explained. "Looks like it's been there for years."

-------

"See?" Temperance parodied a girl standing alongside a slowly-revolving flashy car. She displayed her recently installed locks to a dubious Booth who had just canvassed her apartment for intruders. "You can go now."

She had followed Booth during the canvassing—surprised that he would burst into her apartment like an armed maniac—telling him that his apparent concern for her safety would end if he lend her his .38.

"Apparent?" Booth said, without looking at her before flinging open her bathroom door and be sure the room was empty. "A man whacked you in the head with a spicy-thingamajig-gummy. I was, _am_, concerned."

"A XVII century spice mortar, Booth."

She told him not to worry, that if she ever saw the man again, the outcome would be drastically different: she might confection a necklace out of the guy's teeth. He had glared, just like he was glaring now, standing in her living room, holstering his gun.

"Go, Booth. You have things to do and most importantly"—she put palm to chest—"_I _have things to do."

There was an annoying, painful pound in her temple that hurt every time she made a sudden movement. All she wanted was to pop two painkillers in her mouth and sleep till tomorrow.

"You're not worried that guy's gonna come back." It was a statement he seemed to just figured out.

On her way to get a glass of water for the painkillers she pressed the blinking button on her answering machine.

_Hey, Tempe, it's David. _

"No, Booth. I'm not. If I'm tossed inside a dingy cell in the middle of the Guatemalan jungle, I worry. If a crazy FBI agent wants to gouge out my eyes, I worry."

Booth mumbled, _Christ_.

_This friend of mine owns an art gallery and there's this—_

David's voice got trampled by Booth's own. "So, still going out with pookiebear36, huh?"

_. . .I guess I miss you. Well, call me._

Temperance smiled at the machine and then glowered at Booth before popping one pill and wash it down with two gulps of water.

"Door's right there, see you tomorrow, Booth," she said, pointing at her door with one hand.

_Goddamned it, Temperance! _

The voice, so angry, exploded in the room like a sonic bomb. Temperance flinched and the glass slipped from her hand. It shattered on the floor. Booth froze halfway to her door.

_I TOLD YOU TO STOP IT. Don't you understand? Wasn't I **sufficiently** clear with that bastard McVicar? I don't know how you found that necklace—I—God. We shouldn't have, I should've gone back to get it. Your mom and I, we made some bad decisions that last year because—jut toss it. Just—get rid of it and don't ask **anybody **questions about it. Do **not** disobey me again, Temperance Brennan. _A silence followed as if there was one more thing to her father wanted to say.

But the line went dead.

_To Be Continued. . . _

**To review?**

**Or not review?**

**Here is my cue**

**To tell you**

**To please, please do.**

Sorry, that. . .that just slipped from my fingers.


	3. The Seeley in Silly

**Spoilers: **Up to The Girl in Suite 2103.

**Rating:** Still T.

**Summary (Updated): **

Booth tried to make those facts look better, decorating them with that sliver-lining; he said there was a story she didn't know. But Temperance couldn't get pass the cold, hard facts.

Camille looked up at him, head in a curious tilt. "Why can't I feel used?"

**Author's Notes: **I guess I could be a runner-up for the Worst Updater Golden Bucket. There's a reason for that: I'm a damn slow writer. No, really. Real life complications aside, I need to make four or five drafts before things start to get palatable. I hope you guys can forgive me.

This chapter was particularly hard to write because I'd never handled a plot that actually thickens like this one does. I needed new things to happen in every paragraph, new questions to crop up too; I got a bit overwhelmed with all the things I had to juggle.

This fic hasn't been beta-ed so again, all mistakes are mine. Let me know when you see any.

I'm really glad people stuck around for Chapter Two, I want to thank astridv (thanks for the PostSnag Swagger rec!), avaleighfitzgerald, Alphie13, smellybely, Scazydramaqueen282, Alacaeriel, jenz and PurplePicklesUnite for each and every one of their syllables.

I don't know if the people who read chap1 are still there but thanks to them too, hope you're still enjoying this.

Now, a few words to a few people:

**loneastronomer**: My face lit up like the New York Christmas tree when I read the word 'rec'. One thing though, I never got to see that banner. There's no link. But the fact that you're loving the story gives my ego enough bolster, so don't worry.

**audrey: **First, thanks for reviewing. Second: fear not, Booth would never leave an injured—or uninjured—Bones to answer Camille's booty call. In this chapter you find out who really called.

**Bella-mi-amore**: "A lot of information" it's a good thing, right?

**Sallyboat** and **Grevling**: I tried to make things clearer this time. Let me know if things improved somewhat :)

**Howdylynn** and** smellybely**: "ultra-over-protective gear" will come in Chapter Four and right at the beginning. Promise this chapter is going to make overprotective Booth much more interesting.

I'll shut up now.

**-------**

_Chapter Three_

_**The Seeley in Silly**_

**-------**

Temperance Brennan sought The Truth. _Her_ kind of Truth: the name of the victim, the name of the person who had tried to erase the existence of another human being. The Truth she created in the lab by examining human remains and the one Booth created when he used his knack for reading people or when he went 'Federal'.

The Truth they _both_ created when they worked together.

It was what she had been doing for years so, naturally, when her mother's remains were identified, she thought it was her turn to get The Truth.

What she got was a dangerous tangle of lies and ugly facts: another name, another last name, a brother who had kept things from her, a father who was still alive and a mother that had been alive but watching a movie when she'd needed her the most.

Booth tried to make those facts look better, decorating them with that sliver-lining he liked so much; he said there was a story she didn't know. But Temperance couldn't get past the cold, hard facts.

She stared at the answering machine, her head pounding and making everything just a little bit extra sharp and painful. A sheen of tears covered her eyes.

"I think this call is going to be untraceable, like the last one." She pressed the back of her hand against the tip of her nose, as if to stall the tears.

She felt raw and numb at the same time; too exhausted to coat the past events with a layer of logic that would soften their impact but at the same time, too overwhelmed to let things seep through her heart so that they could really hurt as they should.

Booth came over to her side, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "Bones."

She placed her hands on her hips and nodded. "I think it will." Two warm tears slid down her cheeks.

Booth took a step towards her. "Hey," he said, he lowered himself to catch her gaze.

She wiped the wet tear-trails from her cheeks, going over her father's words.

She stared at Booth and spoke in an eerily calm voice that was out of emotional-synch with her words.

"You know, they left the necklace in our shed. They stole it. They did whatever else they did that got my mother killed. But he yells at me for finding it, like it's my fault."

"Bones, he yelled at you because he's scared," he said, "For you."

Temperance took a deep breath. She needed to take control somehow. She needed to find him, to end the uncertainty that ate her away whenever she gave it half a chance to.

She looked at Booth. "Well, he doesn't have to be. I can take care of myself."

It was Temperance's instinct to convert pain or anxiety into some other feeling; it was a funnel-like mechanism: in pours pain, out goes anger or scientific detachment or anthropological sublimation.

She did this because at one time, there had been so much pain there hadn't been room for more so it had all turned into other things to take the pressure off. Denial about what was happening, anger at Russ, indifference towards the idiotic guardian ad litem social services had appointed her, hatred at her social worker.

The necklace appeared in her mind, along with her father's voice: toss it. Forget about it. Do _not_ disobey me, Temperance Brennan.

"And I can make my own decisions," she said. "I don't want us to stop looking."

Resolve took over; Temperance Brennan wasn't the type of person who responded well to coercion.

Booth stared at her for a moment then nodded. "Ok." He glanced at the answering machine as if considering her father's warning. "Ok," he said.

-------

A computer rendered reconstruction of Bryan George's fractured skull appeared in the center of the Angelator, like a vision from a Death god, in communion with mortals at the Jeffersonian via the magic fires of holographic technology.

"Poor Bryant saw it coming," Angela said as she moved her pen across the digital pad.

The skull reduced in size and its skeleton emerged from the void of the Angelator; a dead Bryant stood once more. A generic weapon—a virtual stick—swung itself at Bryant's skull like a nasty poltergeist.

Bryant's skeleton crumpled.

Zack said, "Cause of death was a massive subarachnoid haemorrhage. One blow was sufficient to cause irreparable damage. He might have survived for a few minutes after the attack but he would've been unconscious."

Angela turned to her. "So what's the deal with Rebecca?"

Temperance gave Angela a warning glance. After filling Angela in on the details of last night, the call, her decision, Booth's approval of it, she had told Angela that she didn't want to talk anymore about it so from then on, she would appreciate if Angela acted as if that day were a normal day—or as normal a day as the Jeffersonian allowed.

Angela had said 'You got it, sweetie.' And now Temperance was _getting it_.

"Ange," Temperance said. "I'm not comfortable with gossip. Let me see a close-up."

Angela obeyed and the skull quadrupled in size.

Temperance pointed at the sections of the skull with her finger.

"It struck the parietal and temporal bones. A depressed fracture indicates a hard blunt object, possibly sharp," Temperance said. "What's the progress on the weapon ID?"

"Initially, it appeared there was too much fragmentation to reverse engineer the weapon with any acceptable degree of accuracy." Zack lifted a finger. "However, I found a peculiar indentation in a fragment of the parietal bone."

Angela crossed her arms over her chest, around the digital pad.

"Bren, it's not gossip if you don't know anything. If you don't share the juicy details." Her eyes grew wider. "Why-what do you know something?"

"No. And even if I'm not the one who provides the information, wouldn't _you_ be the one gossiping? Wouldn't that make me a willing recipient of gossip and therefore a participant in the act?"

She turned to Zack before Angela could counter the argument and said, "What kind of indentations?"

Zack looked at Angela, giving her a cue.

With two deft glides of her pen and one tap, a detailed scan of a fragment of Bryant's temporal bone appeared.

Shaking her head, Angela muttered, "I swear to God, it's like arguing with Socrates."

Temperance ignored the comment. She pointed at the display. "Looks like—"

"I need your tongue, Carolina."

Temperance, Angela and Zack looked at the doorway to see Hodgins with his arm draped over a brunette lab technician, strolling together.

"Oh no, do not let fear mar your features. I need to _borrow_ your tongue. It has a special, shall we denominate it _talent_ I require," Hodgins explained.

Carolina threw her head back and let out a throaty laugh. "Those red curls of yours are putting too much pressure on your skull, Jack." And they were gone.

Temperance resumed her train of thought, as if uninterrupted. "Looks like the—"

Angela's jaw dropped five degrees. "Incredible." She shook her head. "In-credible."

Zack placed the tip of his pen on his lower lip, like Sherlock Holmes with his pipe and said, "It's most interesting. Could Hodgins' aberrant behaviour be explained in terms of his hair follicles?" He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

Temperance gave them both a pointed stare. "Focus, people."

Angela sighed and turned to her. "Listen, sweetie, I'm just worried. It must've been pretty serious if he left you, you know?"

Temperance said, "What?" Frowning, she studied the fragment of parietal bone, floating horizontally and maximized until a barely visible line appeared etched in the bone. "That was left by the weapon?"

Zack pointed his pen at Temperance. "Yes, milliseconds before fragmenting the skull. I studied each fragment and several of them showed a straight line. There's a pattern to them."

Zack looked at Angela again.

Angela pulled up an image of Bryant's skull, this time without the fracture lines caused by the weapon.

Angela said, "Booth got a call from Rebecca the night you got a headful of Neolithic ashtray, remember he left?"

Temperance looked down, at the base of the Angelator. It was Rebecca who had called, not Tessa, like Booth had led her to believe. Actually no, he hadn't led her to believe anything, he had plain evaded giving a straight answer.

She didn't like it when Booth got secretive, it made her nervous.

His work as a sniper must have entailed a great deal of lying and hiding his true intentions and those kinds of skills weren't perishable, he still had them. So far he'd been a pretty lousy liar half the time and a very proficient deceiver the other half; this made it difficult for Temperance to determine his actual capacity for deceit. Temperance had become concerned with the concept of deceit in the last year.

Blue lines appeared on the skull: two, paralleled and 3 inches long. They showed the reconstructed pattern, etched into the skull by the weapon. Temperance refocused, as well as Angela.

"Anyway, things got quite heated. Becky was not happy."

Temperance stared at Angela, determined to squash this parallel conversation Angela had been instigating.

"All I know is that Booth left Parker with Tessa that night. Obviously, it was too dangerous to take Parker with him when he came to my apartment. It was a sensible course of action on his part. If that is why Rebecca was angry, I find her reaction extreme."

Angela's mouth turned into a perfectly surprised 'O'.

"That could do it," she said, nodding. "Definitely. Leaving her child with a former girlfriend at midnight and for another woman?" She shook her head, "Nah-ah. Head injury and wacko fan aside, I've seen divorced parents tear each other to pieces for less than that. I know, I dated a few."

Zack said, "Doesn't Agent Booth get Parker only on weekends? Dr. Brennan was attacked Monday night."

Too many questions, too many tangents.

"Ok. Ok," Temperance said. She looked at Zack. "What makes you think the weapon left those marks?"

"Before removing the remaining tissue I found traces phosphorous, nitrogen and potassium embedded inside the skin and the bone around the wound which means it didn't come from the burial site."

"Fertilizer," Temperance said.

Angela rolled her eyes. "God, Zack, you take your own sweet time, don't you? The murder weapon is most likely a trenching shovel."

She tapped her pad and a digital replica of a trenching shovel—a shovel with a steeple-shaped blade normally used to dig narrow ditches or make trenches for pipes or cables—appeared.

"That was my line." Zack said to Angela.

Angela gave him a Get-Over-It glance.

Zack lowered his head, staring at the place where his thunder had rested before Angela stole it. "I'd been working my way up to end it with a boom."

"With a bang, " Angela corrected.

Temperance nodded at the holographic replica of the trenching shovel as it bashed the skull, the spacing of the lines and the edges of the shovel fitted perfectly.

"Nice work, Zack. What made you think of a trenching shovel?"

"I used to help my grandmother in her garden. Until my mother found out grandma Phyllis was growing cannabis behind a very robust rosebush," Zack said, with a reminiscing gaze.

Temperance nodded. "It makes sense."

Angela frowned. "That Zack's grandma grew her own stash?"

"Bryant had a lot of gardening tools in his apartment. He could have been killed there, maybe the killer didn't plan on murdering him. I have to tell Booth we need to go back."

"Yes, you tell him that, sweetie, you tell him," Angela said, nodding three times in a very supportive kind of way before swinging the conversation back to _her_ topic and being as subtle at it as a tanker truck swerving in the middle of a highway at 120m/p/h.

"What I think is Rebecca found out Booth was, you know, getting some from another source after they had that relapse or after they tripped over something and oh-my they fell naked on Booth's bed. . .whichever. Anyway, she got jealous. Some people are possessive like that and theirs is a complex relationship."

Angela could turn into a black hole sometimes, when she was set on delving into other people's motivations. And Temperance sometimes got caught in the gravitational pull.

Temperance _was_ curious about the dynamics of Booth's life with women. She had been certain he was a solitary Alpha-male, he showed all the characteristics of one and yet—yet he was surrounded by meaningful relationships with women he'd been or was romantically attached to. It was fascinating to observe how he handled himself.

Temperance said, "She didn't sound possessive to me. She sounded quite independent, actually."

Angela tilted her head and smiled endearingly at her.

Temperance frowned. "What?"

"You're a peach, Bren. You really are. Okay, sometimes the deal goes like this: can't have you, don't _want _to have you but don't want _others_ to have you. At least not so _soon_. Been there, his name was Etienne. Met him in Lyon. He did this pretty artful things with paint and not on canvass if you know what I mean," she said in a sultry voice.

Temperance chuckled.

"Where did he paint?" Zack looked from Angela to Brennan. From Brennan to Angela.

Angela gave Zack a pitying look. "Okay, look, _you_ need porn. Rent one. Do it your way if you want, take notes and do charts but _rent_ one." Angela turned back to Temperance. "I'm sure it's Cam," she said, nodding.

Temperance smile became guarded. "What makes you think Booth is having sex with Camille?"

"The head petting, dear. I told you when you were eyeballing that Mongolian skull last week—oh, silly me, you weren't listening. Won't I ever learn. Anyway, nothing says 'I rocked the bedsprings with ya' better than that."

Camille walked into Angela's office.

"Forced by peer-pressure I once watched _Snowslut and the Seven Pimps_."

Camille held up her hands. "Alright, I did not just hear that."

"Dr. Saroyan," Zack said, swallowing with effort, like he'd been caught watching porn right then. "I wasn't. . .I was just leaving." He slunk out of the office.

Temperance stared at Camille and tried to sort out the feelings Angela's theory had mobilized; like sleepy entities nudged awake by the aftershocks of the thought 'Camille and Booth', they were yawning, stretching and stirring up surprising feelings. This made Temperance uncomfortable.

She found that Camille was staring back, eyebrows raised.

Temperance snapped out of it. "Did you need anything?"

"Yes, Dr. Goodman said he needed you to oversee the safe transportation of some Asian Mummies? Says they have to be ready for Germany tonight. And there's a Chinese royal, Li-Win, Lo-Pong Something. He wants you to work on him, for a new exhibit."

Booth came striding into the office, 6-feet of pure kinetic energy.

"Hello ladies," he said to Camille and Angela as he torpedoed towards Brennan.

"Buy you lunch, Bones. Let's go. Chop, chop," he said, clapping his hands. He pushed her forwards a bit and then headed out.

Temperance stood still, by the Angelator. "I can't, I have work to do."

He turned around, buried one hand in his pant's pocket and said, "No, you don't. I talked to Goodman. You're free." He tipped his head towards the door and said, "So, let's vamoose."

Camille turned to Booth, crossing her arms over her chest and regarding him with a look Temperance could not decipher but would have wanted to.

"I talked to Goodman this morning," Camille said.

Booth gave Camille one of his winning smiles. "I talked to Goodman two minutes ago."

He went back, placed both hands on Temperance shoulders and steered her out of Angela's office.

Once in her office, Temperance had barely slipped on her coat when she felt Booth's hand on the small of her back, propelling her forward.

"Ok, ok, don't get your socks twisted," she said, slapping his hand away.

Booth joined his palms with his fingertips touching his mouth and said, "Get your shorts in a twist, Bones. In a twist."

-------

"Before you find out through other inappropriate channels, I gossiped again," was what Bones said as soon as they climbed inside his SUV.

Booth drove off the Jeffersonian parking lot and replied with: "Don't go start doing normal woman things, Bones. You'll confuse the heck out of me and it doesn't suit you."

"Whu—Why? It wasn't intentional. I told Angela you left Parker with Tessa and she deduced copious amounts of data from that simple premise. I was intrigued." She looked at him.

"Copious, uh?"

He could feel her eyes on him and wondered if she was waiting for his reaction to her admission of gossiping or waiting to drop another bomb.

"Angela told me it was Rebecca who called you last night, when you had to leave."

Bomb. And now she _was _waiting for his reaction.

"Yes. She called me."

Bones wasn't going to ask why he hadn't told her that yesterday when they were going over to Fisk the mutant lizard man; strictly speaking, he'd never refused to answer, he had conveniently dodged, leaped over and deaf-eared the issue.

Bones functioned on 'strictly speaking' language, a very logical Squintspeak that Booth took advantage of occasionally.

Bones stared at him in a ¾ profile, with her clear and cautious blue eyes.

"Have you started with the sulking and the not talking to me?"

Booth smiled and glanced at her. "No, Bones. It's Ok."

This really threw her off.

"Why? Why is it Ok?" There's no cause without effect to her.

Truth was Booth knew Angela had overheard but he'd hope those instincts of her only worked from 9-to-5. He'd watched over his vocabulary, didn't use Rebecca's name or any word that gave much information beyond the fact he was in deep trouble. And still, Angela had figured it out.

He wasn't surprised Bones knew, given the fact Angela's head was bound to implode if gossip stayed inside it for too long without being passed along.

However, the _last_ thing on Booth's mind right now was not being nice to Bones, because the information he was about to break to her sure as hell wasn't going to.

"It's all Ok because," he said, parking the SUV in front of Wong Foo's and turning to look at her, "because you gossiped but you told me you did. That makes it all better, Bones." He flashed her a winsome smile.

Bones eyed him for a moment and then climbed out. Clearly him being so cool about it when before he'd taken direct steps to punish her didn't compute. She didn't say anything else until Booth pushed the door to Wong Foo's and waved her in.

"I'm sorry if I caused it. Angela says Rebecca got mad at you because you left Parker with Tessa."

He looked at Bones. So that's why she'd been so silent and ponderous. Bones had a way of being sorry that always made him want to forgive her. Of course, Booth would admit to this only—well, he would _never_ admit to this particular weakness.

He guided her to an isolated table.

"And you left Parker with Tessa because I called you at 2 am when I shouldn't have called you."

As soon as she sat down, Bones started moving the saltshaker, soy sauce bottle from one end of the table, close to the wall, to the exact position he would have moved them: in easy reach of his right hand. When she finished, she put her elbows on the table, crossed her arms and said:

"I'm sorry. . .for causing you unnecessary problems."

All sugary sappiness aside, Booth felt touched by Bones' surprising familiarity with his eating habits. That table rearrangement she'd done would be filed into the "Good Bones" folder, no doubt about it.

Back when he'd first met her and she was 90 percent insufferable squint and 10 percent tolerable co-worker and he was a great deal more on the warpath, he'd thought of her as a very useful, very gorgeous pain in the arse.

After they had spent time together he realized he'd jumped to a few conclusions and in his mind, new categories were added to the subject 'Bones'. It started small, wedged between _All the times Bones openly disregards any order I give her _and _Judgemental Bones_ started one file: _Okay Bones_ and _Funny Bones _then _Rage Against Whoever Wanted to Hurt Bones_.

It had been a long time since he'd put a gun inside a man's mouth and meant it when he said he would fire it if things didn't play out the way he wanted. Then again, he had never met a woman with Bones particular brand of generosity: 'Are you looking for a whoopass? I'll give you one, or two, no problemo'.

Gang-banger, airport security, suspects; so, so generous was Bones.

So what? She drove him three kinds of crazy, but she was honest, brilliant and they were both after the same thing. Several more folders had sprouted in the course of a year like _Good times with Bones_ and _Sexy Bones_.

It was during moments like these he'd just seen that forced him to consider that these 'folders' in his head weren't being stored just _Because_. They were trying to make a point, argue a case.

The thing was Booth _knew_ the point they were trying to make; he'd been close to listen to it once or twice now, when he looked at Bones and smiled and she smiled back and didn't look away and he felt a bit reckless.

But there was no time or place to act upon those files. As far as those other feelings that had sneaked in and mingled with 'friendship' and 'partnership', Booth couldn't deal with them right now. The results could be disastrous for him and for her.

"Bones," he said, looking at her straight in the eye. "First—and never forget this—_you_ can call me whenever you feel that you need me. Second, Rebecca wasn't mad because of you or Tessa."

The second part was a very astute, in his view, bending of the truth. Rebecca did grill him for leaving Parker with Tessa, never mind she'd asked Booth, with no heads-up, to take Parker for the night so that she and Whatsitsname could smooth a few ruffled feathers. Actually just one feather: Booth himself.

Rebecca was pissed off at him for other more complicated reasons. Sometimes, when anger was abundant and irrational it tended to overflow and make a mess. Bones had been caught in that mess.

He wasn't about to make Bones feel bad for asking for help.

Sid came over and without preambles said, "You both look like you crawled inside a cement mixer with half a dozen bricks."

Booth scratched one eye. "Sid, always taking time for pleasantries."

"I know just what you two need, wait a minute."

What Booth needed was something to absorb whatever chemical harm ten cups of coffee and an all-nighter had done to his body.

Bones smiled at Sid's retreating back; Booth hated to put that radiant smile out.

"I found the file on the Chicago bank your parents hit back in 1991," he said.

Her shoulders tensed. "So soon?"

"I got on it after I left the other night."

She did this half-smile and frown combo that told him she was nicely surprised. "At 3 am.?"

He shrugged. "The FBI is cool at night. I can sneak into Cullen's office and play with his golf machine, it really helps me think." He got a smile out of her. "You know, it gets a lot easier once you know where to look. Safe deposits. Chicago. Ten to fifteen years ago, unsolved. No violence. It did make the Chicago nightline."

Bones nodded.

"They took out the outside surveillance cameras of the Fairbanks Bank, bypassed the security system and went in. Fred, that's the nightshift's guard I talked to today, said they knocked him unconscious as he was leaving the bathroom. It seems they'd done all the hard work weeks or days before the actual robbery because they had the master key.

Back then folks figured they must've gotten access to it by conning the main guard. The only unusual thing Fred remembered before the robbery was a woman who'd asked him if she couldn't use the bathroom and had somehow locked herself in, her husband asked him for help getting her out. But they never went near Ronald, the main guard back then.

Also, your parents knew where the cameras were so they knew where to walk and where to look to avoid being caught on tape."

It had been impossible not to see where Bones brains had came from. Those brains could have wreak havoc if Bones' parents had decided to pass on the family business on to their children. Maybe he'd met Bones when he slapped cuffs on her, _if_ he managed to catch her. What a creepy alternate world that would be.

Bones was pensive.

"Once inside the vault, they helped themselves. The thing they didn't know was that this small but very reputable bank was test-driving a new toy. A sort of motion sensor. At night they're set on _No Movement_. It's connected to a private security agency that monitors everything, so a big red flag went up in some guys control panel or whatever that night, when the first safe was removed. They turned up just as your parents were leaving."

She looked at the saltshaker. "1991. Month?"

"October."

She shook her head, incredulous: three months before they left. "Why would my parents change their identities, change Russ and mine, if they planned on keep robbing banks?"

Booth had wondered that same thing.

"Alright Bones, look, as far as we know, that's the only job they did in Chicago. Don't leap into conclusions. You're always telling me that."

Her posture slumped a little. "Yeah, but why risk everything?"

They fell silent. There was no answer to that, yet.

"These security guys," Booth said, "They almost caught them. There was a big chase but they lost them at the end, found their car two days later. Torched to a crisp."

Bones' mouth parted and she shook her head.

She was probably wondering why the hell didn't she and Russ ever notice anything wrong.

Obviously, a couple of teenagers wouldn't be all that interested in their parents movements, especially nocturnal and especially if they went out together. But the fact that Max and Ruth had managed to make Bones feel like there was nothing wrong with her family except for the normal stuff like a rebellious brother, shed light into what Booth was up against.

Max Keenan was smart, disciplined and fully compartmentalized human being who could keep an alternate life secret from his children for fifteen years.

It was going to be extremely hard to find him if he didn't want to be found.

Bones looked at him. "If they'd been caught, maybe they'd both be alive now."

"No, they would have been dead within a month."

She shifted in her seat. "Why?"

Booth winced and gave his chin a quick rub. "You've seen how hard it is for somebody on the outside to off somebody in prison.

Criminals are part of a big dysfunctional family. If they're in the same circle—say, banks—chances are at least they know of each other. One guy recognizes your father, tells another 'Hey, remember Max? From Ohio?' 'Oh yeah, sure'. Tongues wag and McVicar finds out he has to stop looking 'cause the cops just made his job a whole lot easier."

Things might've turned a lot different, in fact both Russ and Bones might have been killed, depending on what orders McVicar had had.

Booth's gut told him McVicar had been sent to dispose of the entire Keenan household, that's why her parents took drastic measures when Russ saw McVicar around.

Bones was staring at the saltshaker again, frowning.

"Hey, Bones?" he asked, reaching across the table. He put a hand on her forearm.

"I'm ok. I think I should call Russ." She paused, maybe thinking about when to call him and what to say. She looked at him again, ready for the rest. "What else did you find?"

"Remember Fred? Yes, well, he told me that two weeks after the robbery a man came up to him in a bar and offered him a ten thousand bucks the get him the private records of the names of the owners who's safes had been stolen—Fred mentioned Bobby was especially interested in safes between numbers 136.600 and 136.700.

Also asked for copies of the surveillance cameras from a week before the robbery. Fred just happened to have been a daddy for the third time and was stringed for cash so he agreed."

"Who was this man?"

"A private eye in Chicago named Bobby Crenshaw."

"Okay," Sid said, sliding both plates in front of them and two bottles of water. "Eat this, drink that and you should get back to your normal healthy selves. What happened to your head?"

"Caught the wrong end of a femur," Booth replied.

Sid smiled, understood it was a sensitive subject and went to spread his food-miracles elsewhere.

Booth reached for the saltshaker and noticed it was it a perfect position, almost as if he'd moved it himself. Bones wasn't eating.

He stopped sprinkling salt. "Bones, dig in."

He watched her until she understood he wasn't going to continue unless she picked up her fork and started packing it. So she did that.

"Now, the real interesting thing happened when I called Mr. Crenshaw. I asked him if he'd worked on the Chicago bank heist, 1991, there was this _really_ telling pause before he made a liar of himself by saying he didn't know anything about it. I told him I knew about the tapes that he should cut the crap if he didn't want me knocking on his door."

Booth whistled. "He got aggressive. Too aggressive."

"Too aggressive?" Bones asked.

Booth noted she was chewing earnestly now and craning her neck just a few imperceptible degrees to inspect his plate. He pretended not to notice this.

"I wasn't probing too deep, it wasn't like I was asking him to go on national television and tell me the name of his client. It happened more than a decade ago, he shouldn't get bent out of shape like that."

"You think he's hiding something?" Bones asked.

"The FBI calls you to ask superficial questions you can do two things"—he pointed his empty fork to the right—"You can cooperate, take the heat off for a while if you're hiding something _and_ look good in the process. Or," he pointed the fork to the left, "Or you can stonewall which raises all kinds of red flags and honking alarms.

Now, I know this guy is far from being a brainless moron; he was one of the best back in the nineties. Hefty fees, big clients. Whoever hired him to investigate your parents robbery must've been a big fish who warned grumpy Bobby about leaking his or her name to anybody."

"It's like the confidentiality agreement between a priest and a confessor. Its cornerstone is secrecy. Time can't erode it." A forkful of stir-fried veggies disappeared inside her mouth.

Booth glanced at her, holding his breath. He broke into a cold sweat every time Bones brought up religion to illustrate a point. Thankfully she didn't stretch the simile into something like 'Priests are like werewolves' or some other heretic comparison that would make Father O'Higgins want to drench her in holy water.

"Then how are we going to find out who hired him?" she asked after she finished chewing.

"I'm gonna call him again and if he's not a lot nicer to me I'm gonna hop on the first flight to Chicago and get acquainted over a dish of cupcakes. I might threaten him, too."

Bones gave him a small mischievous smile, one Booth liked to think it stood for _You're naughty but I like you_.

"What if it has nothing to do with my father or the necklace? What if—" she looked around the table, seeking an alternate scenario—"if he was hired by one of the other people who got robbed? What if—"

"Bones, it's a lead we have to check out. The only lead at this point. It doesn't pan out, we move on. Just," he raised his hand and lowered it a bit. "Calm down."

She nodded twice before her eyes flickered to his plate and then back to his eyes. He smiled and pushed his plate a bit closer to hers and she did the same. Their plates met.

Bones reached over to his plate and stabbed a cube of deep-fired chicken with her fork; she placed her cupped hand under the fork to avoid spilling sauce.

"Bryant George's head wound was made with a trenching shovel. I think we should go back to his apartment. We never considered his place as the murder scene."

Booth watched her chewing and then watched the tip of her tongue darting over her upper lip to collect extra sauce. She reached for his plate again. Off went another cube. He'd set those apart for her.

"Ok. Tomorrow," Booth said, reaching for her plate and staking his fork through some sort of fish he'd set his stomach on earlier. "Fisk hasn't called about the necklace. How about that stuff he said he found?"

Hmm. Tasty fishy. He took some more.

This food-sharing was a habit they had developed overtime, after so many take-out meals they'd become accustomed to the absence of plate-boundaries, if you will. Now after they were done tasting what they'd ordered they always swapped goodies.

The rules varied according to food. Booth didn't like sharing his fries, for example. Bones always claimed hers were less crispy or oilier than his which was ridiculous. Aside from that, Booth enjoyed the sharing. He wondered if cyber David got stuff picked from his plate too or if only Booth had the 'privilege'.

"Lab should have it done by tomorrow. I asked Angela if she could come up with a way of scanning pictures for masses and colors congruent with the necklace. Are you going to eat that?" she asked, pointing with her fork at something Booth had kind of shuffled to the edge of his plate.

Booth scrunched up his nose. He had no idea what that was. "No. From what pictures?"

"Social magazines, Chicago newspapers. It's a…shot in the dark," she said, tentatively and while staring at him.

He gave her the thumbs-up for the correct use of slang and she continued.

"I don't want to rely solely on a jeweler's memory and we need to know who owned the necklace before it as stolen," she said as she finished chewing. She took her glass of water and watched him over the rim.

"I'm gonna head back to the Bureau and finish up a few things but I want to check everything's alright at your place tonight so call me when you're ready to leave the lab. I'll give you a lift or follow you in my car. No, no arguing. I'm coming so don't—" He stopped himself.

Bones had finished her water and was now dabbing the corners of her mouth with a napkin. Her gaze on him, it looked like her mind was processing something entirely different form his words.

"You're not arguing."

Booth, like all people with secrets, tended to infuse certain looks with ominous meanings.

Bones leaned back in her seat, she regarded him for a moment with a very strange look in her eyes; looked like her pre-bomb-dropping stare, where she fine-tuned her question/remark/analysis in her genius brain.

"Are you having sex with Camille?"

Booth was paralysed for a whole second that really felt like a whole hour to him.

He'd planned clever ways of denying everything or of breaking the truth in the best way possible but it was not until now that he understood there would be no 'best' way to tell Bones, just like there wasn't a best way to torch a building—in the end there was going to be fire and chaos whether you started by taking a match to a curtain or a couch.

Not that Bones would be jealous, Booth was careful not to assume that. But there was a fact: Bones didn't like Camille or her methods. And by the look in her eyes, Booth could tell an affirmative answer was not what she wanted—or would like—to hear.

He needed Bones in her best cooperative mood now that they were walking into unknown territories. Maybe the private eye was a dead end, maybe not. Booth had no idea if there was another colourful guy like McVicar lurking in Max's past.

Also, Bones didn't need to feel his relationship with Camille somehow changed his relationship with her. So he lied to avoid them both a problem they didn't need.

"No," he said with an appropriate degree of shock and peevishness. He held her gaze until he saw she had believed him. Then, since Booth believed in 'what comes around, goes back to bite you in the rear' he said:

"So, has 'Mr. Campaign Against Gun Violence' found out you're like the NRA's poster woman?"

-------

It was 2:25 a.m. and Booth sat on the edge of Camille's bed, tying up his shoelaces in the automaton-like way of a person whose mind is off thinking about other things and left 'Hands' on auto-pilot. Two hours earlier he'd driven Bones to her apartment, made sure she was safe and offered to stay. Bones said 'thanks but dorky David is coming over, don't worry'.

Well, she didn't actually say 'dorky' but Booth knew deep down she thought of the word.

Then Camille had called.

Camille crawled on the bed towards him. She ran her hands up, from his lower back to his shoulders, palms warm and soft. She kind of straddled him, her knees flanked his hips. It made Booth want to stop tying his shoes.

She said into his right ear, "You come. You leave. Don't I feel used. . ."

Seeley—he was always Seeley to Cam—chuckled.

"Right. You. Used." She ran his hands over his chest. "I have to leave. I have things to do."

"Let me help you," she said with the wicked tone. She started buckling his belt. Seeley smiled.

"I doubt you can do much for Dr. Brennan at two in the morning," Cam said.

Booth stood up and away from her hands.

He slipped on his undershirt and then his shirt; he left it unbuttoned.

Camille looked up at him, head in a curious tilt. "Why can't I feel used?"

Booth stuffed his tie in his pants' pocket; he snorted a Let's-not-play-dumb laugh.

"Don't think I don't know why you agreed to this," he said, glancing at the rumpled bed.

It had started as a one night thing for fun and as much as he thought it could be only that, soon Booth came to grips with the truth and Camille's intentions. He'd seen them today in Angela's office.

Camille had the cunning gene and had always had the distinct ability to balance the scales in her favor. Be it flattery like she did with 'Hodge Podge' or threats like she did with Zack, she knew how to come out on top.

Except with Bones.

After a few weeks of working at the Jeffersonian, Camille knew—with the certainty of somebody accustomed to emotional engineering—that Bones could not be deftly flattered or intimidated into anything. Camille would never be in charge the way she wanted to be.

With Bones you went on equal terms or on no terms at all.

With Camille you went on unequal terms or she'll spend her time trying to make them unequal in some way.

Add to all this, his own declaration of who had whose back—unconditionally. Camille would evaluate the situation in simple terms: outnumbered, seek strategic advantage.

Granted there was physical attraction and yes, Camille might have other reasons to sleep with him but Booth knew for sure at least _one_ of those other reasons: Camille thought their clandestine relationship gave her some kind of advantage over Bones.

To Booth it made absolutely no difference, his relationship with Bones remained intact Camille or not.

However, _he_ wasn't thinking clearly and Camille was.

Cam lowered her eyes in an apparent shameful gesture that came out as false coyness.

"Good night, Camille," Booth said as he strode out of her bedroom, jacket over his shoulder.

"Don't you think I don't know why you _started _this, silly Seeley," she said, loud enough for him to hear.

Booth made it a point to slam her door extra hard on his way out.

It looked like the figuring out of intentions went both ways.

**To Be Continued. . .**

_Would you like to read more? Let me know, I can't pull this off without ya. _


	4. The Buyer with the Grudge

**Rating: M **(to be sure). There's a little bit of violence, nothing you haven't seen on the show, though.

**Author's Notes: **This chapter has been beta-ed by **MintExpresso**. She made my Booth more Booth-y and my Bones more Bones-y. On top of that she sprinkled commas and semicolons where they were needed and suggested wonderful sentence rearrangements. Thank you, mint!

**Important Foreword**: Believe it or not, if you keep reading this story you won't find inconsistencies with the information _Judas on a Pole_ gave us about Bones' parents. Max Keenan—to me—had his finger in a lot of dangerous pies. _Judas on a Pole_ showed on pie, a big one; I'm going to show you another, a consequence of the one shown on _Bones_.

**Thanks-a-bunch to**:

Smellybely (You want overprotective Booth? You got him), Dana, avaleighfitzgerald (hope you like this), OB, zuclinator, astridv ('rubber ball on speed' lol I have to thank you again for sending Rusky15 my way :) ), omg, mandy, TvObsessiveFreak, lone astronomer (my review of chap 11 is coming!), BB-Jate-MiSA, PurplePicklesUnite, Audrey (Camille, yes, everyone dislikes her. I love her…kidding), Rusky15 (I thought the same thing about the AU idea), a2zmom, boothandbones90 (I have another cliffhanger for ya), rocks and glass, a reader (that is a great compliment! That plot bunny is driving me insane). If I forgot somebody, let me know, I'll kick myself (honest I will).

**OMG! Section: **Apt name, believe me. I corrected two mistakes pointed out by Audrey. That timeline mistake, oh my. Excellent catch. Bad, bad nattysuits. Thanks, Audrey aka Keeper of the Timeline ; )

Hope you guys enjoy,

-------

Chapter Four

_**The Buyer with the Grudge**_

-------

Temperance swung open her door. Booth was leaning on her doorframe with one hand inside his pants pocket and the other tossing a blue squishy ball up and down.

"You're all set?" he said.

"Almost," Temperance said. Booth pushed himself from the doorframe and ambled inside, closing the door behind him.

"David!" she called out.

Booth stopped walking, his head turned towards her bedroom. The ball stayed in his hand, trapped between his fingers. Booth reminded Temperance of a grouchy lion after sniffing the scent of another male in his territory. She'd noticed that Booth's territory usually extended to wherever he was.

David walked into the kitchen from her bedroom, where he'd been making the bed. He squinted at something between his index and thumb. David halted when he saw Booth there.

Temperance glanced from one to the other. Tension. Booth's relationship with David had started on the wrong foot, and Temperance felt it had never moved on from the initial encounter. Booth still behaved as though David harbored the secret intent of murdering her. His irrationality was baffling.

"Agent Booth," David said, smiling. "Hi."

Temperance busied herself with a brisk check of her briefcase contents. Booth gave David a cross between a cough and a chuckle—an acknowledgement of the other lion's presence.

"David," Booth said by way of greeting. "Come on, Bones, I'm double-parked," he informed her, tossing the ball over his head and catching on its way down with a swoop of his hand.

"I think I found a. . .a pig's ear?" David said, peering at the tiny piece. "Between the mattress and headrest."

"Jasper?" Booth said, frowning and looking at her.

Temperance strode towards David, took the ear and headed for her bedroom. She heard David ask, "The pig has a name?"

Temperance sat on the edge of her recently made bed, pulled out the drawer of her bedside table and found Jasper, lying down on top of a silk scarf. She smiled and put the chipped ear next to Jasper. She'd glue it back on later.

She returned to the kitchen to face David's quizzical eyes; he wanted to know why Booth knew the pig's name and he didn't. Temperance glanced at Booth, he was staring at her, a small surprised smile on his lips. Their eyes locked in silent understanding: of what the pig meant, of why and who had given it to her. The moment ended when Booth squared his shoulders and broke eye-contact.

"Alright, let's go, Bones," Booth said, walking towards her front door. He stood by it and shooed her out with his hands. "Double-park? Hello? Jeez."

-------

"You did not double-park, Booth," Temperance said, dead-stopping on the sidewalk when she saw Booth's SUV, perfectly parked.

Booth tipped down his sunglasses. "But what if I had, Bones? What if I had?"

He took her briefcase from her hand and jogged towards the SUV, skirted the gleaming hood and opened the driver's door. He disappeared inside and a second later, the passenger's door popped open.

Booth patted the passenger seat. "Chop, chop, Bones."

"Hey," David said, nudging her shoulder with his. He turned to face her. "I had a wonderful time last night."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know I was so tired."

He had offered to give her a backrub, which they both knew precluded sexual intercourse. But not this time; she fell soundly asleep five minutes and three smoothed kinks later. Her relationship with David had crept from dating to _We're adults enjoying each other's company_. Temperance couldn't pinpoint when it had happened or why, if it was her fault or his. She couldn't explain why she let it continue, either.

Booth started up the SUV's engine then gave it two healthy revs. "Tick tock, Bones."

"Next weekend," David said, "I'm going to housesit for a friend. It's in the Bahamas. Want to housesit with me? It's on the beach, has a pool too. We could do laps…or not." He gave her a playful pat on her hip.

Temperance's mind supplied the steamy images; all of which dissolved when Booth honked the SUV's horn.

For a whole second, Temperance had forgotten about the past three days. She glanced at the SUV. "I can't, David. I'm backlogged at the museum."

David looked at the SUV as well but his eyes lingered on it—or on the man inside it. Temperance wondered if David had misinterpreted things again. For some reason, she didn't feel the need to make things clear for him.

"Better go before he leaves without you," David said. He gave her a peck on the lips and walked towards his car, parked four spaces behind the SUV.

-------

Booth didn't say a word for three blocks. He drove with one arm stretched taut over the wheel and his face set in a scowl that seemed to be directed at nothing and at everything. It was a complete turnabout from yesterday at Wong Foo's.

Temperance looked at him a sense of foreboding. "What's going on?"

He sighed before pulling up his shades and doing the seat-pushing movement. Uncomfortable again. Anxious too which would explain the use of the blue ball, now resting on the dashboard.

"I called Crenshaw again. I played a little rougher this time but he didn't roll. Told me some nasty things about my mother and asked me to spell my name _and_ my superior's name. I spelled 'Cullen' with a 'K'."

He said all this while doing an interested study of the street signs and the road. It looked to Temperance like Booth was avoiding eye-contact again. It was unusual in him.

Temperance surmised 'didn't roll' was something bad and Booth was upset about that.

Booth continued, "I also drew a blank on the banks records. I haven't been able to learn who owned the safes Bobby was so interested about. So far the records have been either burned, shredded and recycled or lost. Depends on who you ask." His fingers readjusted their clasp on the wheel. "I'm sorry, Bones."

Temperance glanced sideways, confused. "Why?"

He winced and tilted his head one way, then another. "Because I should have more by now. Because now I have to go to Chicago and deal with that schmuck. Waste of time." He shook his head.

Temperance found his guilt absurd and typical of him. Also, she felt the need to dispel that irrational guilt. Lately, she was feeling a lot of things concerning Booth. None of which she cared to contemplate.

"Booth, I wouldn't _have_ anything if it weren't for you. I'm—" How to say it? "—I'm extremely thankful for everything you've done." She thought of Jasper. "Seriously, Booth, I. . ."

Booth turned around to face her. She couldn't finish the sentence, her chest tightened, words fled. He stared at her for a moment before turning back to the road.

"I'm confident that you will make him 'roll'. Multiple times," Temperance said. She knew the guilt was gone, at least for the time being, when Booth grinned.

"Bones, you don't know what you're talking about."

"In this instance? Vaguely," she said with a smile. Booth chuckled.

Booth stopped at a red light and Temperance gazed out the window, at a mother separating her squabbling children. A blond boy and a blond girl with a crooked ponytail. Probably the boy had pulled it. The girl pouted and sulked. Temperance couldn't see the boy's face, only his back.

"Russ called me last night." He had told her that he'd gotten a new job in a mechanic shop, and had wanted to know how she was.

"Did you tell him?"

The light changed and the SUV glided forwards. The pouting girl, the boy and the mom disappeared.

"Yes." Temperance remembered the silence on the other end of the line. Russ's tone of voice, what he said. It had been bothering her. "I think he's angry."

Booth took a right turn into Bryant's street. "And you aren't?"

Temperance looked at Booth and then ahead. She had been angry at Russ for leaving her and she'd been furious at him for lying about who she really was, even after her parents had disappeared. Now she was learning more things—worse things—and that anger she had tasted before was nowhere inside her. Gone. She didn't know why or if it would return.

Booth stopped the SUV in front of Bryant's brick-fronted duplex. "Let's go," she said, shouldering her briefcase and climbing out of the SUV.

-------

Bryant owned the top floor. Booth could see cocaine didn't help him being a good housewife—

the windows looked like they had dust that dated back to 1945, and three couples of pigeons had made the window sills into their nests.

Booth hopped up the entrance steps two at the time and dashed to the door, as if escaping from a pouring rain. There was nothing more disgusting than getting bird crap on his suits. Bones fixed him with a dubious stare and climbed the steps like a normal person.

They got to the second floor. Booth took out the keys, unlocked the door and then used one of the keys to break the police seal. Bones entered the spacious living room / kitchen first. There wasn't much looking to be done; a heap of gardening tools covered the dinning table and adjacent floor and walls. Bones propped her briefcase against one of the table's legs, unlatched it and took out a pair of rubber gloves.

"I'm gonna check the bedroom," Booth said.

"Ok," she replied after snapping on a rubber glove. She placed her hands on her hips and looked about for a reasonable location for a recently used trenching shovel.

Booth swung open a red door that led to a short hallway that took him to Bryant's bedroom. The hallway, as well as the bedroom, was painted red.

Booth noticed the unmade bed, the pillow still with the shape of a Bryant's head on it.

Gardening tools rested against the walls; there were a gazillion types of shovels, pitchforks, some looked like collectables. It was odd. But cocaine did odd things to the human brain. And maybe Bryant had been a little kooky from the get go with his dirt obsession.

No trenching shovel yet.

"I found one," Bones said.

"Great," Booth replied. To the left of the bed, under the diffused sunlight that managed to fight its way past the dust-gray windows, was Bryant's artwork. A canvass—3-feet by 2-feet—pegged to the floor by four cans of paint. It was a finger-painted bird's eye view of Mrs. Roth's garden. Booth recognized only part of it.

God, it seemed like a year ago that he and Bones had gone there. It'd only been four days.

Booth left the canvass and went to check the bathroom. Maybe the killer had cleaned the blood off the shovel in the tub.

Booth heard clatter in the living room. His hand reached for his gun—

"I'm ok," Bones said. "I'm ok."

"Be careful."

Booth swept aside the shower curtain. Nothing.

Booth's thoughts wondered to Russ' reaction—precisely to _Bones'_ reaction to Russ' reaction. In the past days Bones had been shocked, then she'd bubble-wrapped herself in logic and she'd been silent a lot. Discounting the break-in and the head-bashing, she'd acted quite coherently.

She had looked mighty puzzled when he'd asked whether she was angry, like Russ. Which is why Booth had asked. See, he knew Bones. She wasn't unbreakable but she did have a dangerous way of breaking. She could take a lot, like she was doing now and like she had done when the investigation had started, when her mother's remains had been identified.

She could build herself into a pressure cooker but unlike most people, once she got to a breaking point, it wasn't a little thing that made her go off. Bones was made of sturdy stuff; she needed a big jolt to collapse. McVicar had provided a big jolt in his shed, and Booth had seen just how much it had all affected her. How desperately confused she'd been. _My name is Temperance Brennan. _

Now all Booth saw was the steam building up and denial closing all the pressure valves. He needed to do something.

"Had a nice time with cutegerbil241?" Booth asked, opening a bathroom cupboard.

She'd lied to him. No, actually, she had omitted a handful of facts to misrepresent the truth. Backlogged? Yes, she was, but because she'd been too busy being whacked in the head.

He asked about David because clearly, if the dweeb was asking her to housesit in the Bahamas the idiot had no clue about what was really going on in her life. Which meant Bones hadn't told him, which in turn meant Bones had used him as a distraction.

Booth had intimate knowledge and experience in the Mechanics of Distraction and Bones couldn't fool him.

After a short silence, Bones said, "Are you being sarcastic?"

Booth caught a dark blur darting past the bathroom's door and straight for the hallway.

Booth yelled, "Bones! Door!"

For some reason Booth considered extraordinarily wonderful, Bones did exactly what he wanted: she kung-fu kicked the door to the living room just as the man went through it. Next thing, Booth heard a violent thump. A man shot out of the hallway as if he'd knocked heads with a testy mountain goat.

"Whoa," Booth said.

The guy plunked on the floor and slid four inches on the parquet before coming to a standstill next to Booth's shoes. He was in his twenties, looked like the surest pick in any police lineup.

Booth rolled the pile of groans until his cheek was pressed against the floor and put his shoe between the guy's shoulder blades. He held one arm high in an arm-lock.

Bones opened the door and peeked in. "You have him?"

"Yeah, yeah," Booth said. He gave Bones legs a surreptitious once over, as if he'd just learned she packed a lethal weapon she hadn't told him about.

Bones kneeled and patted the man's baggie pants. She discovered one gold-plated _Glock_. She eyed it with the same scientific curiosity Booth'd seen her eyeball an Egyptian flowerpot two weeks ago. Maybe she hadn't called it a flowerpot. It was some other fancy name for a Whatever that looks _exactly_ like a flowerpot.

She pointed the _Glock_ at the guy. She always _had _to aim.

"Bones, would you—agh—the gun?"

She rolled her eyes but stuffed the _Glock_ in her pocket.

"Oh shit," the groaner said. "Oh my God. My head. . ."

"Boo hoo," Booth said. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"Sistah," he mumbled. Booth lifted his arm a degree higher, the guy squirmed and cursed. Great, they were establishing a channel of communication via arm. "My sister, man. She lives downstairs, I got the wrong apartment, ok? Lay off, I think I'm gonna die."

Booth exchanged a doubtful glance with Bones. He doubted the guy was going to die and he especially doubted the sister load of horsecrap.

Bones tapped his shoulder and pointed at a closet besides the bed, it was open.

"So normally you like to crawl inside your sister's closet?" Booth looked at the rings in the hand he was twisting, one on each finger. Flashy, like the Glock. "Hey, Bling boy, are you gonna be nice and honest with me?"

Bones came closer and over Booth's shoulder asked, "Bling?"

"Explain you later, Bones." Booth twisted the arm a bit higher. Bling boy decided to be buddies.

"Aright! _Damn_. I came to get what's mine, man. This is police brutality. Imma sue you."

"Whatcha talking about? You walked right into that door. You klutz," Booth said.

"What's yours?" Bones quoted the guy, over Booth's shoulder.

"Flower Lover owned me big. No fault of mine if he's worm Alpo now. I need to collect."

Another fault into the drug kill scenario: Bryant was worth more alive than dead.

"You mean you came to steal a dead man's stuff. Was a bit behind on his cocaine payments, uh?"

Bling Boy said, "No comment."

Booth rolled his eyes, dug the heel of his shoe a little harder between Bling Boy's shoulder blades. "Listen, dirt bag, you tell me what I want to know, I let you go. You get smart, I toss your ass in jail."

Bling Boy puffed an angry breath. "Aright. Aright, man." Then he spilled.

It turned out he didn't know much and Booth believed him. Bling boy had been Bryant's dealer for the past year. Bryant had been a good customer until two months ago, when he got into some trouble with his family and went on a coke binge. He said he was waiting on a commission for a job and he would pay as soon as he got it. Booth assumed he was talking about Mrs. Roth's garden. Apparently Bryant had finished the garden but had never paid his dealer. Hmm. Bad move, Bryant.

Booth let him go and he and Bones left the building. They were about to cross the street, Booth holding two bagged trenching shovels Bones had found and a long tubby thingy for taking soil samples. Bones was telling him about Bryant and his dirt love affair.

"You know, Bryant had a very holistic approach to landscaping, he believed any garden started four feet underground, that's why. . ."

Booth cell phone vibrated. "Booth," he said into the mouthpiece. He stopped walking: Rebecca. Bones hadn't noticed and kept crossing the street and talking to herself.

Booth listened to Rebecca. "How is he? I'm sorr—"

Rebecca and Bones' voices receded, the revving of an engine and the screech of tires sucked all Booth's attention. The shovels clanked to the ground, the cell phone joined the shovels a second later. Thundering down the street was a black SUV, heading straight for Bones.

Booth sprung forward. "Bones!"

Bones brain disengaged from her analysis of Bryant's approach to landscape architectonics and saw the SUV. She would've been plowed down if Booth hadn't shoved her out of the way at the last second.

They fell on the street between two parked cars. Booth managed to take most of the brunt of the fall and knew he was going to be sore in the morning.

"Bones, you ok?" He asked, wincing upright. Bones was chalky pale but nodded. Booth wiped out his gun and peeked around the bumper of a blue Chevrolet. He could still hear the SUV close, waiting.

He glanced back at her when Bones blackberry started ringing. She reached inside her jacket's pocket.

"Brennan." She listened, her eyes fixed on the pavement in a stunned expression. After a second Bones shook her head and looked in the SUV's direction. "I don't know what—"

Tires screeched and the SUV peeled out of the street skidded around the corner. Gone as quickly as it had arrived. Booth didn't like this one bit. He glanced back at Bones.

Bones repeated the message. "Stop playing and make a move. Before I make one for you."

-------

"Hodgins, Zack," Temperance said. She swiped his ID and climbed the steps to the platform in the epicenter of the lab. The shovels and the probe clanked as she placed them on an empty stainless steal table.

Angela, Hodgins and Zack stopped talking and fanned themselves out in front of the her.

Hot on her trail was Booth, with one ear plastered to his cell phone. "License plate 937-JXH," he said as he swiped his card and flew over all three steps in one long stride.

"Bones," he said, trying to get her attention. Temperance ignored him. "Alrigh-hold—Yes, _black_. No, I want it found _now_. Has to be in the area, let the PD know."

Booth loosened his tie and paced in a short line. He reached over his collarbone to massage the back of his shoulder. He winced.

Angela looked from Booth to Brennan. "This is déjà vu. Sweetie? Tell me what is going on."

Temperance's hands hovered over he trenching shovels. She spoke to Hodgins first.

"See if there's fertilizer and if it matches the samples Zack got from in the wound," Temperance said, avoiding Angela's eyes.

"What happened to your hand?" Hodgins said, staring at the scraped skin, glistening with tiny drops of blood. Temperance looked at the stinging wound but didn't answer. Gingerly, she crossed her arms.

Zack's eyes flickered from Booth to her. He was alarmed. She didn't need that now. "Dr. Brennan?"

"I want you to compare these with Bryant's head wound as soon as possible," she said to Zack. "See if any of them match."

Zack's eyes were on her hand. "Nobody has tried to kill you again, right, Dr. Brennan?"

Angela, Hodgins and Temperance turned to look at him at the same time.

Booth lost train of his cell phone conversation and stopped pacing. He looked at Zack, then at Temperance.

". . .yeah, um, when you find it, nobody touches anything until the crime techs get there. Understood?" Booth ended the call.

Temperance licked her lips. Hodgins, Angela and Zack were still frozen in position, waiting.

"A man tried to get his point across with an SUV. It's—it's nothing," Temperance said.

Booth walked over to her. "Ok, here we go. Bones, he tried to mow you down. It's—it's _something_, alright?"

"People seem to want to kill you quite often," Zack observed.

Temperance shot him an exasperated look. "He didn't want to kill me, just scare me. You have work to do." She stormed off the platform. Booth and Angela followed her.

"Bones! Bones!" Booth said, skipping behind her.

Camille came out of her office and intercepted the Brennan-Booth-Montenegro express train.

"What is going on?" Camille said, striding along with Booth and Angela.

Angela filled her in. SUV. Death threat.

"Oh my God, are you ok?"

Just then Temperance halted, Booth bumped into her. There was something squirming inside her that demanded immediate release. Life had to continue unaffected. If she panicked now, what would happen the next time she was in danger? What if she went to a dig in Colombia and a soldier mimicked shooting her with his AK-47—like it'd happened last time?

Pretty soon she'd be giving into imagined fears, she would not concentrate, she would not do her job, she would not return names to remains. Not acceptable.

Temperance turned to Camille. "Yes. Fine. Thank you. Where is the Chinese royal?"

She needed work. A world she understood: bones, their past and present.

Booth placed one hand on his hip. "Oh no, _no_. No working like a dog." He shook his head and rose his finger, pointed it at Temperance's nose. "No. Nah-ah."

Angela came over to her side and took her injured hand in hers. "You have to get that hand checked out. You can't work like that, Bren."

Temperance took a step away from Angela. She glanced at her watch then at Booth. "It's 11:45 am and I'm _not_ going home, Booth."

They stared at each other, silence reigned while their wills put their feet down and stood their ground. Booth's gaze flickered and Temperance knew she'd won.

Booth sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Alright." He stared to his right, deciding. "Alright, but I'm staying. I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"Seeley, she's safe here," she Camille said, a bit patronizingly.

"Stay out, Cam," Booth said.

Even though Temperance hadn't liked the tone Camille had used on Booth, the argument favored her so she made use of it.

"You're overreacting, Booth. She's right, I'm safe here. You can go and find that SUV, you can't do that from here. I'll be ok."

Booth took one step that placed his face two inches from Temperance's. Even though they were very close—and in the middle of the lab—Temperance didn't back down.

"Bones, you stop what you're doing for a second and listen to me."

Temperance swallowed and stared into his eyes. Dark, serious and angry—but not at her.

"That guy broke into your apartment and beat you up. Three days later he tries to run you over. He wants something from you and now I _know_ he's not some wacko fan that read your novel a thousand times too many and has _ideas_ in his psycho head."

Temperance was aware of all that, she opened her mouth to tell Booth but he spoke first. "So, we've been here before."

He was talking about Kenton. Temperance averted her eyes, thinking of barking dogs and their long canines, chains and a key to her eyes. The terror that gradually left her to be replaced with Booth's voice, with his hand going up and down her back, with Booth's arms between herself and the world.

"Let me keep you safe this time. _Really_ safe, ok?" Booth eyes sought a response, an assurance. The guilt was there again.

Temperance sighed. "Ok."

-------

Bobby Crenshaw smelled like dead rat. And now Booth couldn't leave for Chicago without Bones.

Fisk had called and told him that after they'd left, he'd posted a picture of the necklace in some kind of Lost 'n' Found jewelry website and some guy told him his grandpa Aldus had sold it like a millennia ago. That helped Booth with. . . nothing.

The black SUV that had tried to run over Bones had been reported stolen the night before. When Washington PD found it, only the chassis and the gas pedal remained, victim of flashy hubcaps that attracted every crook within a two-mile radius. There was not much to process.

The MO had the earmarks of a professional. The cell phone call to Bones blackberry had been made with the cell phone from the same unlucky airhead who got his SUV stolen. Somebody, somewhere had sicced that guy on Bones. Why? No idea, yet.

All these things had Booth's stomach in a stress knot through which only coffee could pass. Every time he remembered that SUV roaring towards Bones he felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He was beginning to look for threats everywhere. It wasn't an unjustified paranoia, either.

"Our guys didn't detect any explosives at your place," Booth said. Although Booth liked hospital pudding, he wasn't about to take another bomb to the chest just to get it for free. "We posted a guy outside to be safe."

He and Bones were shuffling towards her apartment. Booth lugged a gym bag in his right hand and a suit directly out of the dry cleaners in the other.

Bones nodded, slowly. "Ok."

Sixth 'ok' an hour.

She had a rampaging headache. Booth had just gotten back to the Jeffersonian to drag her out, kicking and screaming if necessary, when he'd seen her in her office, popping two pills, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes. For ten minutes she hadn't moved.

Bones needed a lull to reassemble herself and face whatever came next. Booth certainly needed it; he hadn't slept more than three hours straight since it had all started.

Bones took out her keys, stuck the first one into the keyhole and turned. It was already open. Bones pushed open her door and was inside before Booth dropped his stuff on the hallway and took out his gun.

Her living room was an even bigger mess than four days ago.

"Bones, stay back—" He clawed at the collar of her jacket. He missed it by a hair.

Bones ran headlong towards her bedroom. She was out of view before Booth fully registered how dangerous things had just become. What if someone was still inside?

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Bones yelled from inside her bedroom. Then there were the distinctive sounds of knuckles against bone. Bones grunting as if she was hoisting something heav—

Booth dodged the body of a man. Bones had just hauled him out of her bedroom.

Booth pointed the gun at him. "FBI! You move, I shoot. Bones? _Bones_!"

The man scrambled away and into the living room—never mind the move-I-shoot part. A bullet to the arm was preferable to Bones, it seemed. Bones went after him.

"Don't move! Bones, move over!" Booth said, aiming at the guy.

Disoriented, the man staggered a few steps, tripped with a carpet and whirled around, fist swinging around with him, hoping to hit something. Bones ducked a fist that would've easily fractured her cheek, caught the man's arm so he couldn't take another one at her and gave him a jab to the face.

Booth winced. The man reeled backwards but didn't fall, just wobbled and whined. Blood poured out of the guy's nose. "My no—"

Bones took a karate stance and delivered the mother of all karate-kicks to the man's crotch. The guy doubled over and gasped. One of Booth's legs jerked up in an instinctive reaction.

The guy went stiff with pain and shock and toppled over like a 2-ton tree trunk.

"Holy Mother of—_OK_," Booth said, wincing and sucking air though his gritted teeth. "Ok, Bones," he said, pointing the gun at the man, now writhing in pain on the floor. "That's enough, for now."

"Don't break into my apartment again, you bastard," Bones said, pointing a menacing finger at him.

"Calm down, Bones," Booth said. He said it more because he was worried she would pass out from that last exertion than for the guy.

"Hey, scumbag," Booth said, probing his ribs with his shoe.

The man rocked sideways on the floor hands covering his without-a-doubt shattered family jewels. Although, by the force of the kick, Booth gathered the jewels had forcefully migrated to the guy's throat.

"You _bitch_," he said.

Oh. Wrong move. Booth's smidgeon of sympathy for the man disappeared. "Hey, watch your mouth."

Booth turned to Bones. She was still staring at the guy, just waiting for him to come for her again or enjoying the view from the top. She probably felt like she could take out three more of them. Most likely, she would come crashing down from that adrenaline high in less than 20 minutes.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Bones asked, calmer now.

He guy groaned but didn't answer.

Bones looked at Booth, her eyes said 'Booth, he's not cooperating'. That's when Booth saw her cut lower lip. As if she hadn't been banged up enough before, now her lip. A monster uncoiled in Booth's chest.

"You _hit_ her?"

"Hey, she hit me first." The man pawed his jacket for a tissue to stop the bleeding.

"You _hit_ her?" Booth grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and hoisted him off the floor. He tossed him against the nearest wall, caught him on the rebound and slammed him back against the wall. Booth rammed his forearm against the man's throat, feeling the delicate windpipe.

The guy gurgled.

Bones had been through enough, time to make things easier for her. He pressed the guy's windpipe hard, until he turned red. He probably felt like his head was about to explode. Booth released the pressure a bit, now he had the weasel's full attention.

"_Who_ are you? _What_ are you looking for?" Booth asked.

"I came to get what's mine. I paid for that necklace she has."

Booth exchanged a sidelong glance with Bones.

Bones' blackberry rang again. She put it to her ear and said, "Zack." She listened.

Booth turned back to the man. "So, you deal with stolen jewelry?"

"No! I'm an honest—" Booth's hand reached up and gave his broken, throbbing nose a hard flicker. "God_damned_! Ok, I was a dealer. But I'm clea—"

"When did you buy it?" Bones asked, still on the phone.

"When? I don't know—" More pressure on the windpipe. The man's memory improved. "Fifteen, sixteen years ago?"

"What Fisk wanted to clean off? It was blood. Human. Not recent. At least 10 years old," Bones said.

Booth felt a great deal of anger releasing into his system. "Paid who?"

"I don't know. I don't remember."

Booth's jaw tightened. He cut the oxygen again. "You came looking for a necklace you bought fifteen years ago, you hold a grudge that long and you don't remember who sold it to you? Do I look like I want to be lied to right now?"

Bleeding and about to have his air supply cut out for good by Booth's forearm, the guy gave in. Booth let oxygen pass again.

The guy gasped then coughed. "The Keenans. Ok? We'd worked together for years before they went berserk, when they were supposed to drop that necklace."

_To Be Continued. . . _

_Don't you mess with Booth's Bone lady. And don't you mess with Bones either—unless you're wearing a titanium jockstrap. _

_Hated it? Liked it? Fell asleep and drooled on your keyboard halfway through it? Let me know. _


	5. The Socialite with the Weapon

**Rating (Please read): M.** I sort of graze the subject of torture. So, you're warned. **However**, what I mention, you've seen on the show.

**Spoilers**: Since Bones moves at lightning-speed, you need to know I started writing this before The Girl in the Suite 2103 or else you'll think I'm in denial.

**Author's Notes: **I don't know if you folks read my A/N but I'm gonna keep making them somewhat lengthy.

I'm so-so-so-soooooorry (gives her _Worst Updater Golden Bucket_ a friendly pat) I'm truly sorry. You know I would quit my job and write fanfic fulltime if I didn't have the need to eat.

I'm not going to flat out lie and tell you I'm not having a blast writing this fic, but this chapter—because it's where the plot takes a leap—this chapter made me want to crawl in bed and suck on my thumb for a while.

A huge thanks to my beta **Mint Expresso**. She's speedy, she's knows more about punctuation that I do and she gives me superb feedback.

About this chapter: You're going to hate Camille by the end. If you don't then I'm doing a bad job. If there's something I love, is writing Booth as an Alpha-pooch. Rusky15: you know is not wrong to find Booth sexy when he's roughing criminals up. It's natural. I'll go as far as to say it's in our genetic code.

This chapter digs a bit deeper into Bones and Booth pasts and I honestly hope those parts don't bore you. But if they do, let me know. I don't want to get info-dump-y.

**Many thanks to/Apologies for the wait**:

**Audrey302, **(I loved every word of your review and especially your comment about Cam—that one made me squeal. The review was even longer? Wow, rats and I couldn't read it. Dang Hope you like this chapter), **Rusky15** (how is that criminal-Bones fic doing? If you're a dork, then I'm one too since I've don't that same thing you mentioned. I must say, I love the way you and others dissect my chapters), **avaleighfitzgerald** (I'm a sucker for long and rambly reviews and it did make sense. Ramble, rant, babble away, ava :) ), **smellybely** ("Psychobooth-because-someone-hurt-or-threatened-bones is my favorite" Mine, too.) , **howdylynn** (thanks!), **carrotsix** (hope they stay that way throughout this chapter), **Alphie13** (I _wish_ I could write novels), **omg** (weeeee, great!), **statler** (that's a good kind of drooling, thanks), **tefla** (miss no more, here it is. Flame me later for the wait, methinks me deserves it), **jameni** (nope, she won't ;) ), **PurplePicklesUnite** (yes, I look forward to that in every movie/book), BB-Jate-MiSA (thanks!), **rocks and glass** (hope you like the end of this one, too), **Angel Blue **(wow, thanks), **lazy** (thank you and you keep reading this to your roommate, you might make her/him a Bones fan) and **fialka** ("Good matter-of-fact, non-fluffybunny UST, accurate characterisation, and a casefile to boot." I absolutely went _nuts _over your description. Loved it!)

If you reviewed the last chapter and aren't mentioned here, you are mentioned at the end.

**OMG! Section (March 11)**: I really like it when people take the time to help me iron out technical wrinkles. Thanks to **lazy** for pointing my "gronks" (hehe). In my beta's defense, the second mistake was due to my own ineptitude: she corrected it and then I forgot to use the correct version. And also thanks to **agtmacgyver**, he/she noticed my story summary had been incorrect all this time. I almost had a coronary when I saw he/she was right. And I want to thank you all again for letting me know you're still out there.

**Summary (UPDATED): **

"Max did all the talking while Ruth paced. Back and forth, back and forth. To the counter to the window. Counter, window. Drove me nuts," Flaxstone said.

Hodgins swooped in and pushed Zack out of the way. "I cracked the case."

They fell silent for a moment. Temperance could feel his gaze on her. "Bones?"

"Can I ask you something?" she said into her lap.

"Sure," he said. He sounded almost relieved, as if he'd been waiting all day for a question from her.

Camille looked at Booth. "I need to talk to you in my office."

"Sweet Jesus," Booth said. "Zoom in, Bones. Here," he said, pointing at the screen.

**Before: **

"I asked Angela if she could come up with a way of scanning pictures for masses and colors congruent with the necklace."

"From what pictures?"

"Social magazines, Chicago newspapers. It's a…shot in the dark."

----

Booth's jaw tightened. He cut the oxygen again. "You came looking for a necklace you bought fifteen years ago, you hold a grudge that long and you don't remember who sold it to you? Do I look like I want to be lied to right now?"

Bleeding and about to have his air supply cut out for good by Booth's forearm, the guy gave in.

"The Keenans. Ok? We'd worked together for years before they went berserk, when they were supposed to drop that necklace."

-------

Chapter Five

_**The Socialite with the Weapon**_

-------

Temperance didn't say a word while Booth did what seemed to come naturally to him: take charge, do things. He asked her if she was okay. Temperance nodded, not trusting her voice because her entire body felt like it wanted to lay flat on its back and catch up with the past 12 hours and especially with the last five minutes and particularly with the last sentence.

In stony silence Booth swung the man around, slammed his face against the wall and handcuffed him. Then he hustled him towards her kitchen.

Booth stopped by her dinning table, scooted out a chair and set it a foot or two away from the table. Temperance had no idea what he was going to do but she wasn't nervous. She trusted him. Plus, her headache was returning and bringing light-headedness with it. At the moment, watching was all she could do without fainting.

"Hey—hey, man," the guy said.

Booth backed the man against the chair, lifted his cuffed wrists and looped his arms around the back of the chair. The movement automatically knocked the man's balance so he slumped on the chair.

Temperance walked up to the table and took out another chair. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and sat Zen-still, waiting for blood to pump back up to her head and for her pulse to settle.

Booth took off his jacket and draped it around the edge of her chair. He loosened his tie then took out his cell phone. He speed-dialed and then squeezed the cell phone between his shoulder and ear.

"Right now, you should be thinking of ways of making me happy," he said, looking at the man as he carefully rolled up his shirt's sleeves.

Blood still trickled down the guy's left nostril and down to his chin. His gaze was fixed on her fridge. He glanced at Booth when he spoke, considered his words, then went back to the fridge. Temperance didn't like it.

Whoever Booth had called picked up. "Yeah, Lou, it's Booth. I need you to pick up a scumbag, escort him to a cell. And I need a replacement for the idiot somebody put in charge of Dr. Brennan's surveillance." He ended the call and slipped his cell phone in his pant's pocket.

"Listen," Booth started. "We don't have much time so I want you to make things easier for me and my partner over there"—he tipped his head towards Temperance—"Because we've had a bad day and it's 11:34 pm and you've already pissed the hell out of me."

Booth towered over the man now. His arms crossed over his chest, giving a clear view of his well-toned biceps. Booth aimed to intimidate. She'd seen this before, with McVicar.

"Name," Booth said.

"Mike Smith," he said, blithe.

Booth took a step closer, the man's unconscious body language betrayed him—he leaned back in a textbook response for fear.

"Alex Flaxstone," he said, still trying to sound unaffected.

"You and the Keenans," Booth said, again using that low, deep voice that seemed to be a vocal equivalent of his brooding black eyes. "You were business 'associates'?"

"Yeah," Flaxstone said. He tentatively scrunched back his broken nose, as if to test the damage by degree of pain—the movement ended up in a grimace. "For around twenty years. We worked Ohio, Illinois. My father and I were their prime fencers."

Temperance frowned. Without moving her head she looked at Booth for clarification. Sometimes he could tell when she needed one without her asking. This was the case.

Without looking at her, Booth said, "They took stolen jewelry to you and you gave them cash. Outstanding. Until they went. . ." There was a brief pause that Temperance felt wouldn't have been there if she hadn't. Booth was measuring his words for her sake. "…'berserk'?"

Flaxstone narrowed her eyes, as if suddenly aware of a lurking threat. "That's right. They got in touch with me and we'd been doing business for a month. That is, 'til Max comes by unannounced one day, told me they wanted to rush a deal. Then he went psycho."

He curled up his upper lip and pointed at his left canine and an incisor with the tip of his tongue. "See these?" he said to Booth, as he leaned forward. "Porcelain. Son of a bitch knocked them right out. Broke my nose too." He gave Temperance a flinty glance.

Temperance didn't know what to make of the fact she and her father had broken the same man's nose. "Why did m—" _my father_—"why did he hit you?"

"_Why?_ Why lady, I'm still wondering. The FBI gets his sorry-ass maybe you could ask him—hell" –he leaned back in the chair, thrust his torso out and gave them a lopsided smile—"call me, I'll ask him myself. We can catch up on old times."

Temperance had survived deranged soldiers and homicidal suspects over the years so she _knew_ that she had resources that allowed her to navigate through prickly situations and come out the other end unharmed, or at least alive. But the degree of adaptability criminals possessed sometimes amazed and disgusted her. Flaxstone had gone from fear to coolness in a heartbeat. If it was an act or not, she didn't know. She wondered if her father had the same skill.

She decided he probably did.

Booth winced and shook his head. "Don't buy it. You're looking at breaking-and-entering and assault. I'm gonna write down obstruction of justice, too. Since you're shitting me around pretty good."

Flaxstone glared at Booth. "Assault? You've got to be joking me. Look at her, hardly touched her."

"Yeah, be thankful for that." Booth pierced Flaxstone with a dark stare. "Now, again: Why did Max Keenan hit you? You didn't give them the money? What? I'm not happy here, Alex," Booth said, stepping closer to Flaxstone. "I'm starting to feel disappointed."

"No, I _had_ the money, I was—" Flaxstone huffed and looked away, frustrated or nervous— Temperance couldn't tell. "Okay, when they came in Ruth was strange. Max too. I figured it was because they hadn't been in the game for a while and they were just stretching their legs, you know? Maybe they were wondering if they still had it."

Temperance frowned. "Had what?"

"The skill. I never knew why they'd dropped out of the radar and honestly, I thought they were both in the bottom of some lake. Those two got pretty hot back in the 80s. In their business you get that hot that quick you either burn up, get caught...or get killed."

Booth uncrossed his arms. His hands went to his hips, index fingers above his belt. He was impatient. "So they were nervous. So what? What else?"

"Max did all the talking while Ruth paced. Back and forth, back and forth. To the counter to the window. Counter, window. Drove me nuts. Usually she was a pro but that day she acted like she was twenty again. Anyway, Max told me they had the necklace with them, they needed the money now."

An uneasy knot developed in Temperance stomach.

"And?" Booth asked.

"_And_ I went out back to get the money. That's when they started arguing. Ruth exploded."

Temperance eyes were locked on Flaxstone, seeing him but not really. She had the transfixed expression of someone witnessing a pile-up, suspended in a horrified trance for the next car that hit a gas tank and set everything on fire. She felt that car was about to streak into the pile.

"What where they arguing about?" Booth again.

"Damned if I know. Something about babies. I didn't even know they had kids."

Temperance straightened in her chair.

It even took Booth a second to integrate the information. "What about babies?"

"Something about leaving them somewhere, I don't know." Flaxstone shrugged, uninterested. "Ruth didn't want to do something and was having a fit. Max lost it, yelled at her; he told her they couldn't, that they had to do something or other, I don't know.

Next thing I knew Max vaulted over the counter. He was crazy, asked me why it was talking so long. I told him to hold on a second, that it was new safe and I was having problems with the combination. I wasn't about to tell him, 'Hey, you and wifey are acting all cuckoo and I was kinda eavesdropping'. So he snapped, punched me out, took the money and then ran. End of story."

Temperance looked away from Flaxstone. She tried to process the words, to identify the facts and to arrange them so she could understand. If she did that, she wouldn't have to think about the fact that her mother hadn't wanted to leave her and Russ. Obviously, her father had convinced her after they left Flaxstone.

There was a knock on her door. _Agent Booth, _the voice said.

"When was this exactly?" Booth said, ignoring the FBI Agent that pushed the door open.

"Round Christmas, 1990? No, '91, yes. My father had a triple bypass that year, was still in recovery. Christmas 1991."

Temperance nodded at the floor and stood up. She walked away from the table without looking back.

-------

Booth stood quietly by her couch, watching her. She was standing by her bookcase, looking at a mess for the second time in a week. She picked up two books from the floor and stared at one, then at the other. She slid the heaviest one in the shelf but didn't repeat the motion with the other. She was overwhelmed.

Booth walked over to her. "Bones," he said, putting one hand on her back.

Booth could feel a million things going on inside her head. Her parents. The second break-in. The threats. She didn't look at him but even in profile, he could see her eyelashes were wet. Tears had come fast and hard while he he'd been in the kitchen, giving Lou instructions about Flaxstone. She'd wiped them away before he'd gotten back.

He rubbed two circles on her back, which made her turn to him. "Hey, are you okay?"

She put the other book on the shelf. "Your theory, this fits," she said.

Booth searched her eyes and while he did see exhaustion, he also saw determination and a powerful mind at work. Booth reached for her right hand and brought it up to inspect the damage. She'd peeled off the skin from one knuckle, it was bleeding a bit.

"C'mon, Bones, let's patch you up," he said, tipping his head in direction of her couch. "Sit down." She sat on the couch and stared at nothing with a pensive frown on her face.

Booth went to get the first aid kit she kept in her bathroom. He flopped down beside her.

Bones looked at him. "You were right. Christmas 1991, that's when my parents left. They must have gone to Flaxstone after seeing McVicar. That's why my mother was upset."

He took out a bottle of alcohol from the kit and unscrewed the cap slowly. The theory he had positioned when McVicar was factored in her parents disappearance did seem to track now. Her parents went out, saw McVicar. They figured they couldn't get back to Bones and Russ and ran the risk of being followed so they vanished. Now Booth knew they'd made a pit stop at Flaxstone's.

But there were still holes. Bones saw them, too.

"Only my parents didn't have the necklace with them that day," she said, frowning. "In the message he left, my father said they should have gone back to get it. It means they didn't have it when they left so they…My father lied about the necklace, beat Flaxstone up to take his money?" She snorted. "Not even an 'honest thief'."

Booth tipped the bottle over the cotton ball and took her right hand in his. "You don't know that."

She scoffed. "What else could explain it, Booth? They didn't _have_ the necklace but they said they did."

This is where Bones thought she was being rational because that meant she was on top of things, where she could be 'objective'. She couldn't see she wasn't on top, she was right down in the middle of everything. She carried baggage concerning her father and no matter how much she tried to see only the criminal in him—to limit her feelings towards him to rejection of his lifestyle and of his actions—other feelings seeped through.

He dabbed the cotton on her index finger knuckle. She didn't gasp but Booth knew it had to sting a little.

He blew air over her hand. "Lots of things, Bones, lots of things could explain it and right now neither you or me are in a position to see them. Not at one in the morning, not after today."

She looked away from him which meant she saw his point but wasn't happy about it. "You think my father thought Flaxstone would come after me? That that's why he left the message?"

Booth tossed the cotton ball inside the kit and looked for a Band-Aid. "No. What with you beating the crap out of him," he said. His eyes traveled down to the red cut over her jugular.

Backed up by his gut, Booth was willing to believe the bastard who had held a knife to her throat was the guy Max was afraid of. He was a professional, there was a disturbing coherence to his behavior. _He_ had been in a real position to kill her, if he'd pressed harder and cut wider Bones _would_ be dead. He hadn't wanted her dead then, but he could change his mind. Booth intended to take care of him before that happened.

"I think, somehow that guy who broke into your apartment is the one we should watch out." Booth placed the Band-Aid on her hand then gave it a _You're done_ pat.

Bones looked at her hand and flexed her fingers to test if the Band-Aid interfered with movement. It did not.

"But how did he found out so quickly?" She touched her lower lip with her finger, then checked the tip. No blood. She looked at him. "You think Fisk told him I had the necklace? When your friend call him, you think Fisk somehow knew the necklace was stolen and called this man? If it's the necklace he wants why doesn't he say it?"

"Bones, you're making my head spin. Take a moment to _breathe_, okay?"

Booth had done a lot of spinning that afternoon, and he doubted he could handle more with only three hours of sleep.

After the SUV, and old feeling had revisited him. The last time he'd felt that way, he'd been buried deep down in some Colombian jungle, overlooking a FARC's campsite and waiting for the perfect shot to take out a perfectly nasty drug lord.

_Piece of cake, Seeley. In and out. _Or so his C.O. had said. From day _one_, Booth had had the feeling of being in deep crap—the persistent certainly of hearing the creaking of bad things closing in on him. But all his eyes could see was jungle, chirping bugs and sunlight.

Two days later he was in a hut, getting a concussion from being smacked in the head with his own rifle—by the target he'd been scoping the past two days.

Booth heard creaking now, and he could not explain it, but that guy in the SUV was linked to the necklace and to Bones' father. That SOB had been hiding under some rock for years and now he'd scurried out because he was convinced Bones knew something. What was worse—_he_ was waiting for _Bones_ to make a move. And the guy was anything but patient, it seemed.

Bones' eyes were half-open, doing a sluggish scan of her thrashed living room. Then they closed. He nudged her. She opened them again with a start and sighed. She hoisted herself up the couch.

"I'll get you a blanket," she mumbled and shuffled towards her bedroom.

-------

Temperance was still half asleep when she swung her legs off her bed. She looked around her. Clothes and jewelry on the floor again. She rose her fist—with its Band-Aided knuckle— turned it and smiled. At least this time she'd gotten even. Retaliation was empowering.

She grabbed her robe from a chair and slipped it over her worn collage tank top that said _I Hate Mornings _in faded letters and a pair of old satin pajamas. She stepped into her living room and it took her fuzzy brain a couple of seconds to explain Booth stretched out on her couch, sleeping.

She padded towards him but stopped when she realized her books weren't on the floor, they were on the shelves. Booth. He'd cleaned everything up last night. It must've taken him hours.

She smiled. She walked to the couch, skirted his right outstretched arm and stood over him.

At first glance Temperance thought that if Zack saw Booth in a pair of old sweatpants, no socks and a faded army T-shirt, it would help demystify him. Booth without the sarcasm and confidence was just a guy that slept with his mouth partly open.

His other arm was up, resting on his forehead and covering his eyes. The T-shirt had ridden up at some point, leaving his stomach exposed.

The blanket she'd given him laid in a crumpled heap on the floor, under his feet. She went to pick it up and that's when she realized even an unconscious Booth wasn't so straightforwardly normal as he'd appeared. Zack's awe of Booth would likely increase.

The scar tissue around his ankles suggested he'd been tied up a considerable amount of time. She remembered studying Booth's X-Rays the night after he took a bomb meant for her. The fractures on his feet, consistent with a common torture technique in the Middle East. Beating the soles of the feet with pipes or something that caused damage.

It made sense that they would bind the feet.

She picked up the blanket and stood up. Booth didn't stir.

She leaned forward, supporting her weight on her knees, and observed Booth's midsection. There was that long scar he'd showed Shawn in the interrogation room, when he was trying to bond and get the name of the man who'd murdered Shawn's foster brother. Playing soldiers with his brother Jared, Booth had said.

But then there were more. Right between his ninth and tenth left intercostal ribs. Scar tissue, round. Bullet wound. Old. Maybe from his time in the Gulf. There was another bullet scar an inch above the waistband of his pants. And this is what she could see. There was what she couldn't, like the shielding wounds that appeared only in X-Rays.

_A buddy of mine he…he lost his weapon. And I tried. He didn't make it. _

Temperance started to think it was a miracle—statistical, not religious—that Booth had survived his army career. Especially considering his tendency to put himself in danger to save other people.

When they'd gotten back to the hospital from the warehouse where Kenton had taken her, a nurse had spent ten minutes muttering and shooting him withering looks at him while she set back his IV. The words 'death wish' and 'damned fool' cropped up.

"Aw, Tina, you missed me. No tears, I'm—ouch, "he'd said when Tine muttered something and inserted the IV. "I'm your man now. No more running." He had beamed Tina his charm smile. "What about a pudding? Huh?" Temperance had smiled, Tina had laughed. But that didn't change the fact Temperance saw he could barely move. Booth was very successful at dismissing his own injuries.

Temperance noted a fresh bruise, on his right side. It had to be from taking the fall when he pushed her away from the SUV. And he'd put a silly Band-Aid on her knuckle.

He stirred, lifted his arm and squinted at her through one eye. "Were you ogling me, Bones?"

His voice was surprisingly clear. She wondered how long he'd been awake.

"I was observing, not ogling." It was the truth; there hadn't been a single sexual component to her observations.

Booth tucked both arms behind his head. "That's how it starts, Bones." He looked smug and kind of goofy with strands of hair stinking out at odd angles.

She remembered the living room. She wanted to return the favor. "One time offer. Coffee and blueberry pancakes?"

"Sounds great," he said. He swung his legs off her couch. A grimace flashed through his face.

"Let me examine you," she said.

"I think you've seen enough of this body for today." He winked and then grinned at her.

Temperance rolled her eyes.

"I found this under the couch last night," Booth said, reaching over the coffee table. He handed her a book. "You had dirty fingers, Bones."

The book was a 10th grade, now superbly outdated, Chemistry textbook. It had an atom at the front, blue electrons, red protons and white neutrons. She'd pointed it out in a flea market when she was two, her mother had told her. Her father had bought it.

Booth scratched his head. "I need to use your bathroom." He looked at her.

"Yeah, sure," she said.

As soon as he left she browsed through the pages. Right under a colorful rendition of the subatomic composition of lead she still remembered as fascinating, mainly because of the colors—she'd thought it was the biggest, sweetest chewing gum in the world—she saw it. A tiny, dark blue impression of her three-year-old index fingerprint.

She snapped the book shut just as the memory was resurfacing. She slipped it back under the couch as if it had insulted her and deserved a punishment.

-------

Temperance and Angela were taking a break, sitting on a table high above the quiet whirring of the lab's high-tech machines. Temperance nibbled on the chocolate covering a doughnut while Angela nursed a steaming cup of coffee and her own fear.

"You know, as your friend, Brennan, I need to be honest with you," she said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table. "I'm freaking out. It sort of looks like you're collecting injuries here."

"Ange," she started, giving her friend an appeasing smile. But Angela cut her off.

"It's that necklace, sweetie." Temperance's smile disappeared. Angela looked at her coffee for a moment, then she extended her hand over the table and placed it on Temperance's wrist. She gave it a squeeze. "I'm not suggesting you quit looking for your dad, but can't you hold off for a while? I don't want to come to work next week and see you with a broken arm or. . . ."

_Dead_. The word hung between them.

Angela had always been ambiguous about her venturing away from the lab. Sometimes she was excited Temperance was out there, meeting men. And sometimes, when she perceived danger was near, Angela forgot about men and focused on plane tickets back home.

"Dr. Brennan! Dr. Brennan!" Temperance looked around to see Zack striding towards them.

Angela leaned back in her chair. The conversation was over for now. Temperance made a note to talk later and also apologize for 'bossing her around' after the first break-in.

"Neither one of the trenching shovels match Bryant George's head wound," Zack said. "Hodgins is still working on the soil samples."

"Okay, Zack," Temperance said. She was disappointed. The case was grinding to a halt.

"Bones! Yo, Bones!" They turned to look at Booth, strutting the same distance Zack had walked seconds before.

Zack's back went stiff. "Agent Booth."

"Oh goodie," Booth said, speaking about the doughnuts. He walked past Zack without acknowledging his presence—or acknowledging it, in honor of their bizarre agreement. Zack nodded, content.

Booth sat on the chair next to Temperance. He looked at Angela and her, "Can I?"

Both women nodded. Booth grabbed a glazed doughnut and ate half of it in one huge bite.

"Uh-huh, nice," Angela said, watching Booth chew the doughnut without effort. She turned to Temperance. "So, does Chomper here snore?"

Temperance recoiled her head, puzzled. "Why are you asking me?"

"I got the PD looking for Bling boy. The sleazebag lied." He took another big bite and finished off the doughnut.

Temperance thought about the six pancakes he ate that morning. Booth had always had an appetite. "Lied about what?"

He finished chewing. "I swung by Bryant's sister today"—licked the glaze off his fingers—"She told me her brother had been doing great for the past two months. No family feuds. Even went to some annual Georges barbeque. Now, Bling boy told us different."

"Maybe Bryant lied," Angela put in. "Maybe his sister lied. Who wants to drag family secrets out into the light?"

Booth shook his head and took another doughnut. "Hmm, I don't think so."

"Dr. Brennan! Dr. Brennan!" Hodgins this time, trotting the same route Zack and Booth had. Temperance found it strange, as if suddenly all men she worked with had been programmed to move along the same paths.

Angela said, "My, you're in high demand."

Hodgins swooped in and pushed Zack out of the way. "Move over, Snowslut."

Booth choked on his doughnut. Angela chuckled. Zack fumed. Temperance gathered Hodgins had found out about Zack's experience with pornography.

"I cracked the case." Hodgins slapped a sheet of paper with the back of his hand before handing it to Temperance. "Well, not cracked, but I have a theory, want to hear it?" He was looking at Booth.

Booth wiped his mouth with a napkin then said, "No."

Temperance skimmed over the results. "It's a match. The soil in the wound, the soil in the trenching shovels and the probe matched."

"But the trenching shovels don't match," Zack said.

Booth stuck his neck out and eyes looked up, as if expecting something to fall from the sky. "So," he said. He squinted one eye and looked confused. "So…" He looked at Temperance.

"So Bryant's tools and the murder weapon worked on the same soil," she said.

"Wait, the last job Bryant did was the Roth garden. So that dirt on the tools has to come from there. Right?"

Hodgins blue eyes were wide and exited. He clapped. "Ha! Somebody inside that mansion trenched the landscapist's skull. My money is on the swan-napkin nazi." He wrung his hands. "Who's in? Ten bucks minimum."

Angela shook her head. "Dear God, you need electric shock therapy."

"Bryant hired a lot of people to work for him. One of them, somebody we haven't talked to yet, could have been involved. Facts, Hodgins. Not quantum leaps."

Camille appeared besides Hodgins. Her hands on her pockets and a curious smile on her face. Booth's chair creaked as he straightened.

"So, this is where everybody went," Camille said. She scanned all the faces but her eyes finally rested on Booth. "When did you get here?"

Booth cleared his throat and said, "Just now."

Angela had always been was an excellent translator of the emotional subtext in social encounters for Temperance; Angela saw it all and it all appeared on her face. Temperance saw Angela mouthing an 'uh-oh' and glancing from Camille to Booth. Temperance stole a sidelong glance at Booth. His eyes were lowered, he was playing with the flap of the doughnut box. He glanced at her then and their eyes met for a split-second before he stood up and said he needed to make a phone call.

-------

It was 9 pm and Temperance sat in Angela's office, staring at a blur of passing photographs on the computer screen. The mass recognition program hadn't produced a result yet. Maybe it never would and Angela and her father would get what they wanted: no more poking around from Temperance.

Booth was talking to Parker and pacing in a circle around Angela's coffee table. Apparently Parker had the flu. From what little Temperance overheard, Rebecca blamed Booth for it.

Despite what he'd said, that she didn't have anything to do with Rebecca being mad, Temperance couldn't help feeling guilty. She'd offered to explain to Rebecca the unusual circumstances that led to Parker being with Tessa but Booth had said he'd rather have Temperance saw off his skull. He could be so melodramatic sometimes.

"No, no, bud," Booth said. "Do it like you _mean_ it, let it rip." Booth waited.

Temperance looked away from the screen just in time to hear the faint sounds of Parker blowing his nose. She smiled.

"There you go. Don't ya feel much better now? Yeah. Now, what's this mommy said about you not wanting to take your medicine?" Booth collapsed on Angela's couch. He propped one ankle over one knee and stretched one arm over the couch's headrest. "Wha—you kidding? That stuff is great _and_ it gets rid of the sniffles. I have a glassful of it right now. Yeah, no I don't but I'd love to. Oh, it's the pink syrupy thingy? Ow, I'm not gonna lie, that one's not so great. But you have to take it. . ."

Temperance swiveled around in the chair, giving her back to Booth. On an impulse she pulled the Chemistry book from her briefcase. Before leaving her apartment she'd taken it out from under her couch. She opened it on her lap.

She hadn't touched the book in years and she stiffened when her eyes landed on the top right corner of the first page. Her father had always bragged about how he'd taught her how to write her name at two. And there it was.

_Temperance Brennan. _Then, for historical accuracy: 1979. All in big, clumsy squiggles. She'd been pushing the pencil really hard. She ran her finger over the trace and frowned. She lifted the book to the light and traced her index finger slowly over the _T _again. She tilted the book so it caught light at an oblique angle and saw it.

An underlying _J. _An eraser had taken care of the graphite but the indentation remained. _J _for _Joy. _

She leaned back in the chair and stared ahead. She'd seen that book a thousand times and she'd never noticed it. But it made sense, maybe they'd just left Ohio. Her father had taught her how to write her name at two, but he'd had to teach her again after moving.

It both unnerved and relieved that she didn't remember the transition from one name to the other. Russ had to remember. It couldn't have been easy for a 9-year-old to lose his name—his identity—in a day. And for nothing. New names hadn't been blank slates or new beginnings—their parents hadn't stopped being criminals.

Temperance closed the book and stuffed it back in her briefcase. Her eyes retuned to the computer screen.

She went over Flaxstone's words. Her mother had wanted to go back. Her father hadn't.

Since she'd never contemplated having children, the question _Would I abandon my son and daughter? _was pointless. But as a daughter, the same scenario yielded a resounding _No_. You _don't_ leave your children alone.

The feeling surged with such force it caught her off guard—she _was_ angry. They hadn't been dead when Russ left and she'd become, according to the Foster Care system, a hard-to-place teenager: unsmiling, withdrawn and—by some irrational transmutation of one event early in the system— "difficult".

Her parents could've gone back to get her. But they hadn't.

"Bones?" Booth was leaning on the wall, staring at her.

"Um." She looked around, startled. "Did Parker take it? The pink stuff."

Booth smiled, proud. "Yeah, he's a trooper." She gave him a wan smile.

They fell silent for a moment. Temperance could feel his gaze on her. "Bones?"

"Can I ask you something?" she said into her lap.

"Sure," he said. He sounded almost relieved, as if he'd been waiting all day for a question from her.

"You love Parker," she said, now looking at him.

Booth didn't even nodded because obviously it wasn't a question. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Temperance wasn't sure she wanted to ask the question and she was less sure she was prepared for Booth's answer.

"What would—?"

Camille entered the office. Temperance looked at her.

"Oh." Camille looked artificially surprised. "I'm interrupting?"

Temperance's question and the intent to ask it vanished. The momentum was lost. She said, "No."

Booth didn't say anything and his eyes lingered on hers a moment before glancing at Camille.

"I need to talk to you in my office," Camille said to Booth. Her voice had a tone of formality Temperance had never heard before. Not directed at him anyway.

A long second passed before he pushed himself off the wall. "You stay put," he said as he left.

Temperance nodded. As soon as Booth walked through Angela's doorway, the blur of pictures stopped. "Booth!"

He came rushing back, eyes scanning the room for danger. "What? What?"

"A match," Temperance said. Booth walked towards the desk. He put one hand on the back of her chair and another on the desk so he could look at the screen over her shoulder.

A blond woman and a gray-haired man in their fifties smiled for the camera. He wore a suit and she a black night dress. On her neck was the emerald necklace, partly hidden by the structural outline Angela had made in order for the mass recognition program to work. There were clusters of people behind the couple, all similarly dressed.

"Who is that?" Camille said. She was standing to Temperance's left.

"'Adry loved emeralds'," Booth said.

Temperance read the caption out loud. "Kenneth and Adrienne Belmont, Chicago Theatre, March 1987." The computer found one match and then another and another. Temperance groped for the mouse and clicked on the next picture. _Chicago Times_, March 1991.

"Dammit," Booth said.

"A Triple Tragedy," Temperance started by reading the headline. "Adrienne Belmont, sterling member of the Chicago high society, shot her husband and then committed suicide the past Monday."

"Wow, wow, look at this." Booth pointed further down the article. "Travis Belmont, their 19-year-old son went missing at the same time. Only child. Cops looked for him. No sign."

"Cheerful bunch," Camille said.

"Pull up another picture," Booth said.

Temperance clicked on the next one. It was a family portrait, taken from the waist up and professionally lit. The father was smiling, the mother too but no so intensely. The son wasn't smiling but didn't look unhappy, just...quiet. Adrienne Belmont had her dainty arm draped over her son, his hand clasped her own.

"Sweet Jesus," Booth said. "Zoom in, Bones," he said, pointing at the son's hand. "Here." Temperance zoomed in until the hand occupied the entire screen.

Temperance and Camille asked, "What?"

"Holy Mary and Joseph—that ring." He tapped at the screen.

Temperance looked at it. "It's a domino chip, with the initials TB on it. Travis Belmont. What?"

"I've seen it before," he said, turning to look at her, "in Bling boy's hand."

_To Be Continued. . . _

…and thanks to:** a2zmom**: Since you pointed out part of my plot, I couldn't say 'Bryant _is_ related!' at the top. Maybe everybody was thinking the same thing and only you were the only one who said it but I wanted to be sure. Now I'm afraid you're gonna figure it all out **shivers.**

_So. I have _no_ idea if there's still "readership" for this story, with me being a crappy updater and all. If any of the wonderful folks from before are still around, tell me whatever is on your mind, I can always use your input. You've earned the right to flame me so, let me feel the heat. _

_Be "rambly", be succinct imagine heroic soundtrack here, be a reviewer. _

_Eeek, that was SO cheesy. _


End file.
